This data seems pretty useless for the most part. Median salary without taking into account the location is meaningless. On page three, they try to separate regions but "Pacific" is certainly way too wide a region to get anything from it.
The only reason salaries would be depressed in backwoods places would be if the cost of living was drawing in so many workers that it drove salaries down. So is that the case? If you live in some low cost of living midwest spot in the road, do you get a thousand CVs before you finish writing a job description? If not, if you have trouble hiring in these areas then the salaries are too low.
Nearly everyone in the US is a firm believer in capitalism but they don't generally practice it with their most valuable resource: their time.
When you set up a company in Timbucktoo you get none of those things. That means that a company at the margin is happier to pay for a developer out of NY, so there is increased demand in NY than there is in Timbucktoo. This drives up salaries in NY.
> The only reason salaries would be depressed in backwoods places would be if the cost of living was drawing in so many workers that it drove salaries down.
Remember there are two curves, supply AND demand, and they resolve simultaneously. Workers could be leaving the region and salaries could still be going down, provided demand was decreasing as well.
Go the "we pay everyone the same, regardless of location" and you'll end up with either (a) a bunch of workers who are artificially dispersed, and less effective as a team, or (b) fewer good people, because your competitors are paying much more in desirable areas.
[A dispersed team is not necessarily bad, but it's a /skill set/ and it doesn't work for all types of projects, for all types of people].
So what is the market justification for paying these other employees 25% less? Are there more people willing to work in those locations? Of course not. The companies are manipulating those people into thinking that paying them less for creating the same value because their cost of living is lower.
In this case (and others I am aware of), yes.