A few years ago, there was a slide at a presentation at OSCon/TPC about the relative demand of people with skills in various programming languages. I don't remember the exact statistics, but IIRC, Java and C++ were the most in-demand skills, with Java slowly eating away at the demand for C++ programmers. This same survey also demonstrated that Perl was a rather in-demand skill, having just recently eclipsed demand for COBOL programmers (or something).
Jeremy Zawodny found some interesting evidence behind that trend: demand for Java and C++ programmers was a fashion trend driven by the dotcom bubble. This data tracks job openings in C++ and Java in Silicon Valley from September 1999 to June 2002, and follows a peak demand for 55,000 Java programmers in April 2000 to a more subdued demand for 2000 Java programmers in June 2002.
I wouldn't say that this data is anything more than an interesting lie with statistics, but it certainly does start to explain what a lot of people felt in 1999/2000: demand for Java/C++ programmers was unbounded, unrealistic and out of control. The entire tech sector is hurting, but a 30-fold decrease in demand seems out-of-line.
