It "depends". A huge part is you get to spend less time commuting, like, 2 hrs a day. You are talking about money and time that companies can save by paying you less. Another is, you can get a lot more quality of employees per dollar if you can hire them in some low cost area instead of at your HQ. In my work the same quality employees cost about 25% less in rural out of state than locally in Silicon Valley, AT LEAST.
So you may have a quality guy in Alabama who would stay with you for 10 years, but the same money in California would only get you a guy who stay for 1 year. Of course the top guy would still get recruited from Alabama to California and paid California money + more by the good companies (i.e. Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc), but not every employer is top quality and will pay top dollars, so....
Also don't forget, with work from home completely, work from home 4 days a week, etc, people are willing to live further away (sometimes way further), so the "area" has gotten larger than ever. 50 years back people probably live 50 miles away at most, now they probably live 100 miles away if they are going to come into office 1 day a week.