Language is much less important to me than the actual work, and I can use whatever language I want in my job. The problem is there are so few people who code Perl anymore it makes it hard to collaborate if I use Perl.

My point was that if you check job boards etc, there seems to be lots of Perl jobs/people around. The closest hub to me is probably London.

But if popularity is a factor, then go PHP...

Right, and my point was I don't want a Perl job. I've had Perl jobs, from jobs.perl.org. I don't want a PHP job, nobody would work with me in that language either. Most people use Ruby/Python in my circles these days.

I find language specific jobs incredibly lame. Language is a small factor in what I do. I just want to be able to say, "I'm gonna do it in Perl." and not have everyone groan and not want to work with me on it.

You could have written that "in my circles" part from the beginning. :-)

If you don't define your circle as 'workplaces from jobs.perl.org' then you have trouble using Perl ;)

Well, I do -- at least for a subset of those geographic areas.

Something similar goes for most any language, except (probably) Java and PHP. Unless you already live in e.g. London or some other hub for a given environment.