Yep, it almost looks like a few companies got together and 'faked the demand' for COBOL devs so that they don't have to pay them so much after the older and wiser maintainers retired.

Or maybe we have a shortage of JS devs? Since they can program everything from linked lists in microcontrollers to machine learning pipelines, and, obviously, are well paid for it.

Edit: Like the other commenter here (sesuximo) said, "want to make a bet?"