There are two sides to this and one side consistently seems to get ignored in these threads. If a company in San Francisco decides it will allow its employees t

There are two sides to this and one side consistently seems to get ignored in these threads. If a company in San Francisco decides it will allow its employees to work from anywhere from now on, but pay according to local cost of living, then employees who had been based out of San Francisco and decide to move to San Antonio may have to take a pay cut to do so. That is the side that is always focused on. The other side is people who already lived in San Antonio but can't relocate, for one reason or another. Their spouse has a career and doesn't want to leave. Their kids are in school and don't want to leave. They're disabled or have family in the area that depends on them. Those people can suddenly go work for the company in San Francisco that is no longer requiring you to relocate, and might make less than employees based in San Francisco, but more than anyone was offering in San Antonio. This is the side that never seems to get brought up. It's not at all clear that, when the dust settles, the balance of those who had to take pay cuts versus those who saw pay raises to work remotely is going to work out with more seeing pay cuts. Short run that will be the case just because most companies had a lot more pre-existing employees in March 2020 than they have hired since. But that won't remain the case forever.