I've talked to some successful sound engineers, or heard them talk. One was the guy who runs the Public Radio studio in Minneapolis, where Garrison Keiler records, and many albums, some recognizable, have been made (I'm sorry, I'm blanking on his name).
He did not sugarcoat it at all. He said it's a damn hard thing to get into, even harder to sustain yourself at. Basically, he said, if you're just looking to get into a vocation and say, "Hmm, being a recording engineer would be cool"--look elsewhere, it's not for you.
It's really the same advice that a musician gets. "Fun" may be a significant component of it, but that doesn't come without very, very hard work and sacrifice.
Not trying to burst your bubble, but this advice will inevitably get thrown at you.
But I think the job market is more open than people think. As long as your heart isn't set on working at someplace like Abbey Road, you have many options. Think about it; not only studio and live sound, but the film industry, commercials, news rooms, radio, etc. If you go to school, commit, and know what you're doing, a job of some sort can probably be found, though it may not be very glamorous and you might need more than one of them to be comfortable.
Also, like Joeywhat says, even if you get a job at one of these places, you might spend a significant amount of time just doing general work, and not what you went to school for. You might be the guy who gets asked to clean the bathroom or the fish tank, or run to Starbuck's, and so on. You gotta work your way up. A lot of the successful guys did just that, started at the very bottom and through "good old fashioned American hard work" or whatever you want to call it, climbed their way up the food chain.