Well I'm one of those people :D I write a lot of HTML and CSS, and over time I'm having to be able to write some frontend plugins in JS - but I haven't had any client work using frameworks like Angular, React, Ember, etc.
So far all of the people I've worked with (and all of the people the freelancers I know have worked with) are all either building static HTML, building on top of WordPress or another PHP-based CMS, or are building frontends for custom PHP and Ruby applications. So far none of the people I've worked with have touched JS on the backend (Node and NPM stuff) for work projects, or have been using things like React, Vue, Angular, etc on the frontend. Even as popular and visible as some of these frameworks can be, a lot of the business world seems to build their own stuff to meet their own needs.
I do think it's possible to have HTML, CSS, and JavaScript under your belt, and a good understanding of the browser and the web platform and be able to find good employment!