You seem to vastly overestimate the choices people have, especially those who live in rural areas where there are more people than jobs, and many people live paycheck to paycheck. You mention "not having enough money" -- yes, that's exactly it, and many (most?) of the people in that situation don't have a way out of it. You can't get a better paying job where you live if there isn't one, or at least isn't one you're qualified for. You can't keep your job at home and travel to a city to interview for a better job if you don't have the money for transportation, or can't get (or afford) the time off to interview.
Oh, I'm not saying there aren't traps. I strongly believe we should have some economic mechanism to help people relocate to where the jobs are - a major reason our country is in the current situation is due to people not moving like we thought they would. Part of that is being stuck, and we need to address that (more). But another part of that is the belief that the world should adapt to you. It's funny, because many people making fun of being entitled, are actually incredibly entitled in believing that jobs should come to them.
There was an interesting thread on reddit about coal towns in (I think) Virginia, and the mindset of people there and the situation they were in. It was stated that there was a large pool of money in the state available to people for retraining (coal to trucking or solar development, etc) and something like less than 25% of the money was even used.
A woman I know got a simple laser cutter and designed a site around doing craft projects with it. In under a year she has thousands of followers and is making thousands a month doing it. I mean, hell, just get you and your friends together and say, "ok, we need to get out of here, lets all live together as cheaply as possible, until we have enough money, then rent some place in a better location, and live there, pooling resources, until we all get better jobs."
There are options, now more than ever with the Internet existing and the mind numbing amount of resources it brings.
