Outside of city centers in my state it's almost 20% less per hour. Sure, the housing is cheaper, but other goods cost the same. That's 20% less money to spend on groceries, cell phone bill, gas, car payment, etc. Also, moving out of the city, I would have to get a car again to get anywhere, instead of using the bus. It doesn't always make sense to just drop everything and move to the burbs.
this isn't about cities. there's not a single US state where you can afford a two bedroom on a full time minimum wage salary. And for 93% of US counties, you can't afford a one bedroom
Money, services, and better job quality are all found in cities. Rural is physical labor and bad pay. It usually also smells like either a farm or chemicals for those rural jobs too.
that's just the statistic, but yeah. Can't afford that either. But people will tell you to "just move somewhere affordable" when the point is there isn't a single place in the US where you can afford a two-bed apartment on minimum wage – which should be a wage you can live on
Yes someplace affordable is what was called a Hoover house about a century ago, that is a cardboard house or stacks of used paint cans and dreams of a communist revolution.
Hoover and his industrialist buddies were livid over FDR's New Deal, not realizing it was a stopgap to let capitalism get its shit together.