COBOL joke from 1999:
A COBOL programmer, tired of all the extra work and chaos caused by the impending Y2K bug, decides to have himself cryogenically frozen for a year so he can skip all of it.
He gets himself frozen, and eventually is woken up when several scientists open his cryo-pod.
"Did I sleep through Y2K? Is it the year 2000?", he asks.
The scientists nervously look at each other. Finally, one of them says "Actually, it's the year 9999. We hear you know COBOL."
It's easy peasy. Read a tutorial and it's done. Easier than C. Biggest problem with COBOL software is most programs are idioticly huge and have been patched and expanded for decades. Touching anything will break everything. Source: i patched y2k
just to be clear, I want it for getting a job, not just learning how to develop in COBOL.
My father does Cobol programming for banks.
Insurance companies in Des Moines, Iowa, USA tended to be heavy users of COBOL near the year 2000. If you want a job writing COBOL, I suggest looking there. I am sure at this point they will do some training.