It's a very rural area. The primary local employment base used to be in textiles and furniture. Both have all but vanished in the last 10 years. I'm glad I got into the IT field, but such jobs are very few and far in between in this area. I'm lucky I found a good job here, and wasn't forced to relocate.
Issues like this are painful bumps in the road. I'm working in the cornfields 120 miles south of Chicagoland. The IT duties are perfect for my skills and interests. The pay is fantastic precisely because Americans, even those with no roots in a community, or willing to relocate, turn up their nose at working in a community of 120,000 in the cornfields when they'd prefer to work in a suburban metro of millions population.
I have plenty of job offers in Chicagoland. But either the money is no good, or the pay is great but the nature of the duties is not my cup of tea. Of course, if I were truly desperate, I would take one of those jobs that was less than perfect.
I've seen numerous attempts at tele-commuting. In the IT shops I've been around, it has not worked well. Often, but not always, productivity is telecommuters is much lower than those who come into the office.