You know, I always heard this, and I have kind of a morbid fascination with old mainframe technologies, even though I've never used any professionally. So I looked pretty deeply into that job scene. Turns out the vast majority of the jobs hiring for COBOL etc pay 70,000 to 80,000 a year. It's not bad pay in some parts of the country, and the hours are generally reasonable. But they're not really, really good salaries.

I worked in one of those roles for a year or so, though in the UK. From the salaries you quote, I assume you mean the US? In the UK that sort of money is quite good.

The salary you quote, converted to UK money, is about right for entry-level roles. I was hired in that company at a graduate level and I had no experience of mainframes whatsoever when I got the job (which I hunted down out of the same morbid fascination you mention).

My older colleagues though, the ones with 30+ years experience, they would be getting much better money than that. It would depend on the position also, but I heard of at least one graybeard who was asked back from retirement, because the company couldn't afford to lose his expertise.

Now, I don't know what they paid him, but I'm pretty sure it's what I call a really, really good salary.

It pays sensibly because it's a job that really needs to be done, but it doesn't pay too well because it's not a rocket science and it's easy to find somebody who can be trained to do it.