Rural America has a lot of the same issues as Rural Australia, and the same lack of solutions. We've been trying a few things for a while now with regards to limiting a lot of immigration to rural locations, and requiring things like placements be done in rural locations etc. The problem that both of these have found is that after the required amount of time, by and large people leave to larger areas whether that's the regional capital, or one of the state capitals. It's essentially keeping small country towns on life support but not actually reviving them. And to be honest I'm not sure there's a solution to that.
The jobs just aren't great, there's not much to do, you're far and away from the things most people like being able to have the option of having (seeing a theatre show, seeing live music, going to a museum, eating out at multiple high quality diverse food places, having access to a wide array of shopping options, having a broad and diverse array of jobs etc), the diverse communities a lot of people seek just aren't there, and unless you like the particular brand of politics a lot of these places bring you will find you probably won't fit in. They also tend to be underserved by infrastructure, particularly in relation to health care and education, but also with regards to things like poor internet infrastructure, as well as having a stark lack of culturally safe places and services for diverse populations to find comfort, support, assistance, and community within.
For the average person there's no reason to stay in these small towns other than housing prices being actually achievable, but houses could be as cheap as chips and most people still won't want to move to a place where they're miserable but with a mortgage instead of rent, for a house that will most likely be unsellable at close to for a reasonable value in a decade or two. The quality of life between somewhere like where I grew up near Eugowra (pop. 650~), to even a nearby major rural capital like Wagga Wagga (pop. 60k~) is astronomical, and the quality of life between Wagga Wagga and a bigger semi-urban city like Ballarat (pop. 120k~) that is within actual commutable (1 to 1 and half hour drive/train ride~) distance to a state capital is astronomical again. The benefits past that, say moving to the larger Geelong (pop. 300k~) or directly to the state capital of Melbourne (pop. 5.3m), are much smaller and they start to introduce a lot more downsides to go along.
What's the solution? Subsidisation to keep these towns on life support so that they can continue to serve the needs of industries built around them like agriculture? Eventually the cost of this will balloon to an unsustainable degree, which is why Australia has been trying to find a solution. Letting them die and shift to moving the functions of these towns (and populations) to larger regional centres, like a Wagga Wagga, that can self-sustain? This is probably the rip the bandaid solution but it won't happen as it would be deeply unpopular, and at least as far as Australia goes we don't have the population for the density of larger cities to cover our masses of agricultural land inevitably leaving a lot of farmers worse of - the US has the population density where this is more feasible but they also have the political system that gives outsized influence to these small rural areas that makes it impossible.
Whatever it is Australia has been throwing money at trying to find it for years now, and small towns and cities keep slowly shrinking. Immigration is good for a lot of things, but this is an issue it hasn't shown to be effective on, because immigrants don't want to be the sacrificial offal that feeds generally terrible dying towns with poor quality of life.
