I haven't been around long enough to be in any way an expert on the helicopter industry, but I do wonder if this isn't becoming a little bit one-sided. Also, mrgogetter lives in the UK, which could make a difference.
When I started helicopter training in 1999, people got a PPL, then did an instructor's rating, then after enough hours got a CPL, and usually a job on the North Sea. That seemed to be the route, and it seemed to work for many.
By a year later it all changed. You had to get a CPL first, BUT the oil companies were taking on pilots with new CPLs and less than 200 hours. Utopia!!! Yes, but only for a bit.
Along came 9/11, airline pilots lost their jobs, duel-qualified ones went back to the North Sea, who then demanded an IR before they'd look at you, and then...haven't been following it, but I think even with an IR you're not guaranteed a North Sea job any more. So new CPLs begged, borrowed, or stole more money, hourbuilt to get 300 hours and an FI(R)...so that now we have a surplus of FI(R)s...and I think a shortage of fully qualified QHIs, but that's no help to the new instructors who can't get work.
Now, that could all change, as quickly as it happened. I've no idea of the likelihood of that, but I doubt if anyone else knows either. Perhaps, again, there could be jobs on the North Sea. It's debatable whether they lead to much else, but when I went up there to visit a friend who's been working there for ten years, and see what I thought of the life (just before things all changed and they weren't taking anyone anyway
), some pilots had been there for years and loved it, while others were bored and told me not to bother. I guess it depends if landing on oil rigs for ever turns you on or not. To say nothing of living in Aberdeen!
Anyway, I realise this doesn't help anyone make a decision. But perhaps the situation is not always, everywhere, at every time, as black as others have made out.