alt Hacker NewsA while back I came across job listings for a COBOL consultancy near me that only seems to hire fresh grads for well below market rate (not much higher than retail/restaurant jobs - this is in a cheaper part of the US). They promised to train their employees from the ground up and implied that COBOL knowledge would set them up for a really profitable career. It seems like they were taking advantage of the common advice: "just become a COBOL developer, it pays well because nobody wants to use COBOL!" But I'm skeptical that someone coming out of that consultancy with 2 or 3 years of experience in nothing but COBOL would do well on the job market.
The places I know that use (or used cobol 5 years ago) were all in hiring freezes for cobol developers and were trying to get off of it as much as they could (no new development, only maintenance, etc). I don't think its a surefire bet.