Have you ever been to Ohio? Cincinnati is arguably the most interesting of Ohio's cities and is still kind of boring (I say this having lived in the 4 largest cities within Ohio). It is logistically important and is undergoing an Amazon boom (plus some UPS/Fedex locally, UPS Worldport is ~100 miles away in Louisville) with multiple new 1MM+ sqft warehouses being opened each year for the last ~5 years. Cincinnati's airport also has multiple daily direct cargo flights to various Chinese cities to shuttle inventory.

Housing is moderately cheaper, but the $20-25/hr jobs aren't really the types that people are willing to relocate for-- they're physically demanding with super high turnover because they are probably a bad deal relative to the wear put on your body. Mostly there have just been more bus routes to transport people from exurbs to work these jobs. Nobody really chooses to live in Ohio if given other options (besides even worse states like the Dakotas or Mississippi), they're just born there or familial obligations cause them to move there.

It's a circle:

1. People flock there

2. Those people need services

3. More jobs needed to provide those services

4. Return to 1.

Aside from this, Ohio is a convenient place for logistics and commerce owing to a centralized location in the US, strong infrastructure, and a business-friendly regulatory climate. Hence, warehouses and factories serving the rest of the US which means the economy isn't self-dependent and this raises the minimum wage floor for everyone.

But, to answer your question directly, I imagine not everyone is eager to uproot their current lives and move to a suburb of an exurb of a suburb in Ohio.

Presumably the pay is great if you already live there, but not good enough to convince people to move there?

Personally, it would take a 50%-100% raise before I would even consider consider uprooting my family and leaving my current city. But I’d switch jobs locally for half that.