I have read that between 60 and 80 percent of transactions in F500 companies STILL go through Cobol at some point. Many of these are legacy applications that would cost a fortune to replace.
And Cobol/DB2 Cobol/Cics programmers are dropping like flies.
Learn Cobol now and a person could write their own ticket!
That is so true.
And try explaining IMS to someone whose life is pure RDB and they'll be lost in seconds.
But if you are a core datawarehousing guy, jobs are also available -- I got my job here in Poland even while I was learning the language (Polish this time ;-P) -- but I think the Cobol and MVS/JCL experience mixed with unix knowledge helped in the interview!