Perl is competitive in more areas, but many of them are not traditionally high paying or high status areas for programmers, e.g. sysadministration or data mungi

Perl is competitive in more areas, but many of them are not traditionally high paying or high status areas for programmers, e.g. sysadministration or data munging. Combine an aging Perl workforce with lower paying positions and you end up with unfilled positions. Banks are willing to pay good money to either train someone or hire an experienced engineer to work on their mainframe.