State Unemployment Claims Stalled By Eisenhower-Era Computer Code COBOL : NPR

Bill Hinshaw’s phone has been ringing off the hook lately.

From his home in Gainesville, Texas, which Hinshaw describes as “horse country,” he runs a group called the COBOL Cowboys. It’s an association of programmers who specialize in the Eisenhower-era computer language. Now their skills are in demand, thanks to the record number of people applying for unemployment benefits.

Many state unemployment systems run on COBOL, but lack the programmers needed to deal with the swell of applications. Like Hinshaw, 78, many COBOL programmers are older. In fact, there are more COBOL programmers in retirement than there are in IT departments right now.

via www.npr.org