I wouldn't have had a job between 2003-2004 which was untangling Perl and rewriting it in C# :)
And it was turning a procedural mess into an OO mess.
Is there growth in the actual number of Perl full-time positions or is it declining?
Companies obviously need Perl programmers to maintain and enhance existing systems, but we don't see or hear about any new start-ups using Perl as part of their stack.
Fwiw: I don't use Perl anymore but was a fan and love Moose and CPAN.
Yes!
we don't see or hear about any new start-ups using Perl
The world is a lot bigger than just startups, but see: