Well, it's nice to have new developers coming through and joining the ranks. The main issue for Perl as far as the industry is concerned is that it's damn hard to find good developers (yes, it's hard to find good developers for any language, but Perl appears to be even harder).

Some people say "well, hire non-Perl devs and train them up", but that's really the problem. Because Perl doesn't seem exciting to a lot of people outside the community, the good non-Perl devs don't *want* to learn Perl. And if they're good devs, they can pick and choose their roles.

So companies are starting to phase out Perl because they just can't find developers. (The other usual Perl FUD most likely adds fuel to the fire).