As WWW says, there is little or no comfort to be had from statistics of aircraft orders, pilot 'shortages', or past profits in a market where no-one really knows what's happening.
Oil prices have taken on a life of their own, going beyond production fundamentals and now driven by funds exiting stocks and forex for commodity futures. No-one knows how high the price of oil will go, nor how long it will stay there. The only thing likely to bring it down is evidence of significantly reduced medium-term demand. That will need to be coupled with signs of greater stability in oil producing areas, or evidence that alternative sources of fuel are significantly closer to absorbing, say, 10% of current oil demand than they are right now. Any of those factors may take another year or more to become established.
In the meantime, airlines must budget for the market they live in. As houshold and corporate budgets get squeezed by both inflationary pressures and lack of credit, the demand for air travel will naturally reduce. Increased costs will also make air travel more expensive, further reducing its attractiveness. Most American airlines are anticipating consumer demand for air travel treducing by 15 - 25% this coming winter, but have only announced capacity reductions averaging 8%. That suggests worse is to come. In Europe, opinions about how much capacity needs to be taken out is more variable, but most believe it'll be around 10 -15% overall. Whether that's by airline failures, or by a more organised capacity reduction is largely irrelevant in the context of this discussion; the net result is that by this time next year it is likely that there will be 10% fewer pilots employed in Europe than there are now. It may be more. At a rough guess, I'd say that means about 5000 qualified pilots back out in the jobs marketplace.
Now, these numbers are pure speculation, and you'd be foolish to base your plans on them, but it seems almost certain that anyone graduating between now and this time next year is likely to be in competition with type-rated and experienced pilots for the very few jobs that will exist. In similar times in the past, it's taken two to three years for all of those unemployed but relatively experienced pilots to be absorbed back into the market. Some never will be; they'll take up their own plan B, or simply retire. In the meantime, several of those who are being spat out by the schools into the cold, cold world simply will not have a hope of getting a job. Oh, there will be stories of the odd one or two who, by dint of extreme dedication, resourcefulness or just sheer luck, make it despite the odds, but the majority of those who graduate in the next year to 18 months may well find themselves having to earn their living outside a flight deck for a while.
So, if you don't have to be one of them, do something about it now, and let's hope that the economic picture doesn't turn out to be a lot worse than I paint above.
Scroggs