Finding perl jobs is not a big problem -- neither is the salaries paid to perl programmers. The fear is that at some point, perl jobs might be restricted to maintenance of moldly decade-old code-bases. If perl is perceived to be "declining" then new, sexy, world-changing projects aren't going to implemented in perl.
(My theory: perl programmers need to start their own companies and leverage CPAN to conquer the world.)
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There are literally billions of lines of production code written in COBOL. It's still there, and still will be, because (a) it's already debugged and (b) “COBOL moves the freight.” Since businesses really are in the “freight-moving” business vs. the non-business of programmer-pleasing, that argument always carries the day.
If you want to keep yourself contentedly in gravy-and-biscuits, stick to that perspective and don't worry about what's “new” today. No matter what course you pick, you're never going to be lacking for work to do, that is, once you learn how to find it without gathering around some internet water-cooler along with 50,000 other hopefuls and 120 commissioned recruiters.
Computer applications are generally timeless. Say you write the world's sexiest application today. Five years from now, ten years from now, that's going to be “old” code and certainly not “sexy,” even if it hadn't changed at all. But your company is still going to be in the business of “moving freight,” and if you've proved yourself reliable and instrumental in making that happen, they'll still be very glad to see you walking in the front door.
(And by the way, young whippersnapper ... “decades” is not “old!”) Ha-rumph! ;-)
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