I can only speak for myself, but as what andrewem also mentioned, I have been getting emails from recruiters too albeit at a lower frequency of about once a week. I got my current job 6 months before graduation.
Won't call C++ a niche area. I don't know where you are, but have you considered moving to a place with more developer jobs?
I have considered it but the cost of living is a fair bit higher (e.g. London). So we're talking about a 20% cost of living increase.
Even the jobs coming out of London aren't that good. My current job is better than most. As I said there is a lot of unemployed programmers around here and competition remains tight.
A lot of people got thrown out when a bunch of service and or financial companies went bust, and they've been stealing all of the interesting or well compensated work.
Won't call C++ a niche area. I don't know where you are, but have you considered moving to a place with more developer jobs?