Well when we were trying to find a competent Perl programmer 3 months ago we had a really hard time. Granted the economy has changed since then, but anyone who was any good at Perl was being snapped up very quickly. Also looking at resumes there were a lot of Perl projects that had been started in the last 6 months to a year. Also there have been tons of Perl books published recently (although the publishing industry has a long lead time so that may not be significant either).

So based on all of that I would guess that perl is still quite happily hopping along.

Remember too that PM is not exactly an unbiased set of people to ask about the health of Perl.

-ben