Your mileage may vary, but PHP is on its way out and no matter how it "improved", its reputation really hasn't. People starting new projects means nothing if there's no traction for jobs.
It's absolutely not true that there's no traction with PHP, even if we grant that PHP is "on its way out"! That kind of comment shows how out of touch you are. As for PHP's "reputation", a lot of that is legacy from 4.x days. But when was that? Oh yeah, that was the early 2000's. I'll say it again: if you look at PHP today I think you're going to see that things have improved dramatically. Just ask Facebook...