As someone who moved out of the Midwest for higher-paying work, this comment is 100.01% accurate. I had to move to Chicago for my first real job--one which went away a little bit after after the early 2000s dot-com crash--and then eventually moved out of Madison, Wisconsin, when an east coast company bought my employer out and fired nearly everyone. That last time around, I was apparently making way more than the local median salary, and really needed to replace all of it and then some.
Every time I think about going back, I say "minimum $120k," and they say "ope, that's a bit much for us, dere" and never call me again. It saves time, I'm sure, but very disappointing nonetheless.
From Minneapolis-St.Paul to Pittsburgh is the Midwestern megacity, with zero serious geographical limits on densifying, or adding to suburban sprawl. And every company in it would happily offer $70k/year to someone with 20 years of experience, and still believe it to be "extremely generous".
At first, I thought they were all lowballing for the purposes of negotiation, but it turns out that they're all uniformly miserly.