And an employee in the Texas suburbs will generally be "going for" less, given it's a different market. Sure, as more people are working remotely, the gaps will close more, but someone living in a cheaper area is generally going to be willing to accept less pay. As such, the going rate in the cheaper area will generally be lower.
That is a conflation of cause and effect. Employees in general may be paid less in Texas, but that doesn’t mean the location is the cause.
As companies go remote, they will depress salaries as a side effect of no longer having a locality-sensitive hiring constraint. But again the cause is the hiring constraint—not the location the employee is in.
