Originally Posted by CornedBee
Different fields demand different skills. Most jobs that involve writing custom applications for various companies will generally favour RAD languages over C++ and similar, for the simple reason that it's faster and cheaper to develop applications with them.
The general-purpose applications are still usually written in C++, for various reasons. Big software companies will often favour C++ skills, as do companies that require lots-of-computation applications like the one I'm working at right now. There are fewer of these companies, and thus fewer jobs, but they might pay better on average. (Haven't checked.)
It is my opinion and experience, though, that once you know C++ learning Java and C# is easy, so you could just do that and be qualified for just about every programming job that might be thrown at you.