Unemployment rates are severely under tracked.

[richardhutnik]

HappySqurriel said:

Kasz216 said:

Yeah, I can back you up on that.  I've heard the same things from people I kneww who coded.  COBOL is real popular among hospitals and the government of all things.

Me... i'd never even heard of it till he mentioned it.

I should be clear that it is not (necessarily) a good idea for a new grad to seek out training in languages like COBOL, even though there is still plenty of work with systems build using COBOL. These jobs exist because of how technology is managed in most companies.

A company like a bank, oil company or a large telephone company can often spend tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars building a system over a 5 year (or longer) period to match their business needs, and since it began development using modern software and procedures by the time it is completed the technology behind it is somewhat outdated. With how large the initial investment was, and with how long it would take to re-do that initial work, most of these companies add on to these existing systems for decades as their business needs change and grow.

Eventually, these systems are migrated away from but this tends to create an immediate increase in the need for qualified people who understand the technologies the systems were based on to reverse-engineer the systems; because many of these companies do not understand their own business practices.

 

Back when I was graduating, I had a job offer right out of college for Bloomberg, as a Fortran programmer trainee.  I turned it down.  I wasn't the first at it.  Had train ride to NYC.  Paid price for a year of not finding work as result.  Eventually ended up with IBM, a year later.  Bloomberg said NOT to do long commute, because hours are long.