Can St. Louis hope to one day be a true center of high technology? In a recent report titled Responding to the Technology Talent Shortage, consulting firm KLG Inc. identified St. Louis as one of only two locations (with Raleigh) exemplifies a "high-quality, alternative market" for technology employers.

"St. Louis is a particularly strong IT employment market that is currently underutilized," the report said. "It is HQ to a number of large blue chip firms such as Anheuser Busch, Enterprise, Monsanto, Edward Jones, AG Edwards, Emerson, and Express Scripts and is also home to a number of divisional HQs for the Fortune 500 including Boeing's Phantom Works R&D Division, MasterCard's Technology headquarters, AT&T, and Reuters."

The report added: "For a large portion of the nation's population that is resident in the Midwest, St. Louis is viewed as an attractive lifestyle option, and new talent continues to move into the market."

All this was music to the ears of local business boosters. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the local Chamber & Growth Association is whispering about one Fortune 100 company that may relocate its tech center to the area, bringing in 1,500 jobs. The Chamber also says 880 back-office jobs of a major northeast investment banking firm may be coming to town.

In the more immediate future, the quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which covers all industries, found that from January to March, a respectable 32 percent of the area companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, according to Liz Crawford, a Manpower spokesperson. And recruiter Robert Half Technology's IT Hiring Index indicates that 12 percent of St. Louis-area CIOs intend to add staff during the first quarter of 2008.

With 1,000 current listings on Dice, St. Louis has about the same number of opportunities as it did a year ago. Listings dipped 5 percent in 2007's fourth quarter, at least partly because of normal seasonality. Statewide, the Dice Salary Guide finds the average IT salary in Missouri is $62,910, up 1.6 percent but among the lowest of all the areas Dice tracks. That's certainly one reason the region looks increasingly attractive to companies in search of locations to move or add jobs.

And what kinds of IT jobs are available? The recently published 2008 Robert Half Technology Salary Guide sees strong demand for database administrators, systems administrators and network security administrators. William Howe, St. Louis regional manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies, says, ".NET developers, SAP, and network engineering have been consistently in demand in this region, but demand for project management and business analysis has waned in recent months."

Overall, Howe agrees with the findings of the talent shortage report. "St. Louis is a re-emerging metro, with a unique history, a good quality of life, a low cost of living, and an unusually high percentage of educated workers," he says. "Therefore, many companies have been rapidly, if quietly, growing their IT labor forces here." He notes that biotech and financial services firms have had consistently strong demand for IT professionals in the region. He's looking forward to a busy 2008.