I am working way more than the person above me and unsure if I should quit

I, 26F, am working way more than my 33M senior colleague.

For reference, we essentially have the same role, with “senior” added to his title right before I was hired.

I was hired as a mid level, although there seemed to have been some confusion and I was unaware that my workplace thought I was a junior level this whole time. Might’ve came off that way as this was my first corporate job, but I do have a lot of experience freelancing and junior is absolutely not what I signed for.

For a while now, because he had to move to another state, he has been in office maybe once a week, while I have been in 2-4 times a week. Because of this, I have to take on way more projects, as we are unable to transfer projects to him remotely.

I work in a small team, with one other colleague and one team lead. The team lead tried her best to accommodate my colleague, so that he doesn’t have to travel much. Because of this, I get stuck with way more projects.

A thing that bothers me, you could argue that I should do more cause he’s a senior, and he’ll just take on harder projects, but no. I take on the harder projects. Because I have a set of skills that he does not, and I have to juggle the important quick turnaround projects along with the longer, more difficult ones.

Now it would be maybe even okay if we were paid the same, but I am paid significantly less. Also, we have had clients come to us asking for a project, my team lead gives them my senior counterpart, and they say they would rather wait for me instead.

Does anyone else have this type of work environment? I really like the work I do, but this is getting too much for me. I don’t want to throw my colleague under the bus and report the amount of work we’ve done individually to our team that runs the metrics, but I really need him to pick up the pace.

And yes, the metrics team is unaware of all of this, as our team lead makes sure to cover for our colleague.

We’ve had a very pleasant working environment, but I do see that my team lead gets frustrated with me when I say that I am overworked.

I’ve spoken to my other colleague about this and he sees my point, but tells me that it’s hard to get a job in our field currently and I should stick it out if I can.

Is there something I can do without going to hire ups, if I had to do that I would rather quit than throw my team under the bus. I don’t feel like my team lead is considerate of how much work I have in proportion to my paycheck, when being compared with my senior colleague.

Any advice is very much welcome!