Your problem seems that you are relying on someone else to employ you. Why not create products by yourself and become a potential employer? Unless the society itself crashes due to large scale wars or natural catastrophes, people will always want and use useful software, and that includes time wasting entertainment ones. There are so many things that need to be done, so as long as what you create is not yet another tool that does the same old thing that twenty others already do with no differentiating aspect to it, its worth pursuing this path.

Software engineering is the most equalizing field in modern society. I mean, anyone with interest and reasonable intelligence can get good at it; they just need a used laptop and a decent internet connection. Add a good amount of CS understanding, and general creativity, one stands to make it big in this field. Compare that with trying to build the next generation automobile by self studying mechanical engineering, or creating a drug to cure your least favorite disease by learning bio chemistry through a MOOC.

Software engineering is the new humanities, albeit a lucrative one, in that you need just a bit of push in the beginning after which it is all up to you to explore and get good at.