I am currently a senior level quantitative analyst (quant) working in the area of risk management. I noticed that this area become "hot" after the crisis. I have seen several layoffs in our company, and survived (at least for now). While having a job, I still get calls from recruiters for various other opportunities in quant. I just got another email today from a recruiter for an opportunity at TX, send me a QQH if you are interested so that I can forward the email to you.
The key thing is that I really enjoying processing large amount of data (SAS is the tool) and building numerical models to forecast trending, etc.