Refer to the title of the info-graphic. Salary required to buy a home in the 50 largest cities in the US.
Obviously people with money exist in rural areas. I never claimed that there were no good jobs. I said if your industry does not exist outside of large cities then you are basically forced to live and work there. Take for example a hardware engineer for a tech company. They absolutely have marketable skills, but the work cannot be done remote thus without changing industries how are they supposed to move to a rural area?
If you have those same marketable skills you can make a ton of money in large cities. Senior software engineers can realistically make $300K or more in nyc. If they go into fintech then they can make absolutely absurd amounts of money. Even in traditionally wealthy neighborhoods like the uws or ues the median household income is $130k. They are not hurting for cash or sacrificing any sort of lifestyle to be there.