If you live in a small town, I can believe that the opportunities are limited, but in basically any metro area of any size, it's a developers' market.
I live in Fort Worth, I was in the market last month and I got flooded with offers for interviews from the North Dallas area (Addison, Plano, Frisco). Not talking about these "urgent requirement" emails from indian recruiters, this is actual local recruiters I have dealt with before.
My background is pretty much like OP: I learned to program BASIC on the C64 and dropped off college, the difference is I did all that in South America. Since I came to the US in 1999 I haven't had trouble finding a dev job besides being unemployed for 6 months after the dot-com bubble.
Guess what? The employers were pickier than the recruiters.
I've learned to deeply distrust recruiters: they are known to make up lie after lie just to throw as many names in front of an employer as possible on the off chance one of us gets hired so they can grab their commission. They'll ask employers to interview blatantly incompetent candidates (including myself: I was absolutely not competent for some of the positions recruiters tried to get me) just because they're that desperate.
Then, when I was looking for a new job in 2014 (employed, but unhappy at my then-current position), I got innundated with so many recruiters lobbing utter shit at me. This time, I could afford to be picky, and I wasn't afraid to say to some of the shadier ones, "never contact me again". I had multiple recruiters try to offer me a six-month contract in another state, despite my profile on every job site saying both "unwilling to relocate" and "full-time only, no contracts". I had recruiters try to get me positions that required twice the amount of experience I had in technologies I've never touched. I had one recruiter repeatedly send me calls and emails for a position I explicitly told them I wanted no part of the first time he contacted me, and he didn't stop until I sent an email saying "please cease and desist from contacting me again, or I will take legal action against both you and your firm" (I should've also called his firm's HR department, but c'est la vie...).
Oh, and now that I'm happily employed at my current employer, I still get frequent calls from recruiters. I legally changed my name (first, middle, and last) in June 2014, but most of the recruiters calling me ask for me by my old name, and I'm at a point in my life where even hearing my old name causes me emotional distress.
In short: recruiters are sleazy, and being contacted by recruiters has no bearing on whether or not you'll actually get a job.
I'd bone up on that, and learn angular inside and out as well as a couple of other JavaScript frameworks for good measure. That's what gets me hired as a C# developer in php, ruby, and java shops where I can then gradually show them I know UX, devops, and other little valuable things. The trick is that the hot thing in short supply will change this time next year and you'll need to keep a finger on the pulse of it and learn that if you're looking to job hunt.
I'm actually writing a UI in Angular right now or a Java-based system I wrote. I hate it. It is a pain I'm going through because I need a UI for this prototype, but there is no way I would want to do this full-time.
(The last couple are usually Idaho or Nebraska or one of the other corporate-fief states.)
I don't know your background, but would suggest going with a modern Java framework, or ASP.Net MVC and build something... go through the latest Apress or O'Reily book on the subject in question... At the same time start going to user group meetings locally. This will tend to get you at least in the door as far as interviews go... from there you're on your own.
Yes, some places you won't get past H.R. without a degree, but I've been at this for a couple decades now, and as long as you get current or keep up, you should be employable.
I've found employment since (and even changed jobs over the new year), so it's definitely something one can recover from, and for all I know the job market might have changed since then so things are better now.
Anyone saying there are no jobs in this area has a crappy resume or no skills
