As someone who was born and raised in St. Louis, MO -- I can tell you it really depends. In the last decade or so, my opinion is that it's time to get out of St. Louis if you're trying to make a living there doing I.T.
It has several "big players" who hire for tech positions and pay well, but the problem is what's available outside of those options. Enterprise Leasing, for example, has their corporate HQ in St. Louis and employs a lot of I.T. workers. (Some of my best friends worked for them for years.) You've also got options like Boeing, Energizer or the A.B. brewery.
But take a closer look and you can see a trend of Boeing scaling things back over the years in St. Louis. (Ever since they bought out McDonnell Douglas, they've been shrinking the size of that campus.) A.B. hasn't been the same ever since they sold out to InBev, either. And the once well regarded A.G. Edwards Company is now Wells Fargo Advisors, a company not exactly known for being a "great place to work" in I.T.
Don't forget the auto makers who used to have plants in St. Louis and are now gone.
The cost of living is reasonable (especially housing prices), but crime is pretty bad these days (just look at the insanity ever since the Ferugson riots), and the once amazing riverfront area is pretty much gone too.
These days, you find the occasional good I.T. position open in STL working for the Federal Reserve or maybe a contract with the Post Office. As in all cities, I.T. jobs are available with the school districts and hospitals too -- but you won't hear a whole lot of stories of high job satisfaction with many of those. I guess there are some openings at Emerson Corp. too, but that puts your workplace right in the middle of where all the Ferguson fallout lies.
After living there for around 40 years, I had enough ... saw the writing on the wall, and got out. Working in the DC area now, I was initially unhappy with the cost of living making my salary increase an actual pay cut. But you learn how to live cheaper out here, in trade for a longer commute - and eventually settle into something that's effective. (Or don't, and accept the higher cost of living as an acceptable trade for being in the heart of the DC night life, etc.) By using public transportation, I literally went from putting over 1,000 miles per month on my vehicle to only putting 2,000 on it in 5 months. That requires a change in habits but makes it cheaper to live here than it first seemed.