From my experience, companies that want Perl programmers are mostly big ones with plenty of inertia, that have some legacy build code slapped together years ago by a clueless guy that thought he can write Perl (though he really couldn't), then extended by Java-only or C++-only programmers, so it now stinks heavily and can't be replaced or rewritten (because of inertia).

Sad thing, given that I do like Perl. But it may be just my surroundings.

Or there's legacy code slapped together years ago that's gone through a whole bunch of "my personal methodology" contractors, each of which has added another layer of nonsense and NIH madness, until you're left with a huge and brutally complex system that almost no-one understands, is a brain-melting nightmare to follow, and is impossible to change without constant failure.

(Why, yes, I am currently working on a Perl codebase.)