[atombath]

Sorry but in my experience, your instincts are correct. Smart managers who will give you the serious market-correction bumps do exist but they rarely exist. Even then, you will need to have undoubted value in order to leverage a serious bump, as they will have people above them that will fight it.

In my experience, you will have to jump from job to job in order to get incremental salary increases, since yearly increases are not only shallow but percentage based(so lower salaries receive lower increases.)

I've seen many companies that attempt to thrive on lower earners, who are typically straight out of college. It's a successful cost-cutting measure that works until their products turn to shit.