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The IRS still use COBOL.
That's not even a government thing. It's a finance/banking thing, as most major banks are still using mainframes and legacy COBOL code for most of their business logic.
So does pretty much the whole banking and credit industry. When you get money out of an ATM there's usually some COBOL code involved.
True, we stack old technologies on top of older technologies, and somewhere at the bottom, there is z/OS with COBOL running. A young person right now learning COBOL has a secure future with big paychecks.
Depends on your tolerance for code spelunking. Back in the 90s I was encouraged to do Y2K prep because I had some COBOL experience, but I really hated pawing through old code. To be fair, COBOL was designed to be self documenting and English-like. But I'm glad I got into web dev instead back then. It was right at the dawn of "dynamic HTML" when web pages started actually doing things. Very cool time. Right now I'd be more inclined to go into helping companies recover from failed AI projects.
Reminds me I have to catalogue 2 Tandem Non-stop! Systems at work… I don’t need to meddle with the cobol code atop but still, this was quite a surprise to stumble upon.