No direct experience here -- I got my current job a year or so before the recession hit -- but secondhand accounts suggest that the demand for programming jobs right now is highly regional. Here in the SF Bay Area the job market seems weak but basically stable, but I have friends on the East Coast that claim their respective companies have been forced to hire substandard applicants just to put enough bodies in chairs.
Related to: Optimal Employment, Best career models for doing research?, (Virtual) Employment Open Thread
In Optimal Employment Louie discussed some biases that lead people away from optimal employment, and gave working in Australia as an option for such employment. What are some other options?
Your optimal employment will depend on how much you care about a variety of things (free time, money, etc.) so when discussing options it might be helpful to say what you're trying to optimize for.
In addition to proposing options we could list resources that might be helpful for generating or implementing options.