I was laid off only once, a week before 9/11/01. Finding a job after that was a bit difficult, in fact, I worked in Dayton for nearly 10 months before I found work back in Columbus. I seem to be in a bit of a different area of IT compared to most everyone in this thread, as I'm a Software Engineer, not a tech support person. I've been doing software development for over 8 years now, part of which was when I was active duty Air Force. The money is good, but now you can't go asking for the sky as far as salary goes. I make about what I did 3 years ago, but also suppliment that from time to time with some part time consulting work. smile.gif
While I am in "IT", my company is in the healthcare industry and needs me to support and develop it's in-house applications. Being in IT is one thing, being an IT person at a company in a strong field is another. For what it's worth, I develop in ASP, T-SQL, .NET, Crystal Reports, and PHP/MySQL on the side. If you keep your skillset up to date (speaking as an engineer, of course), there is no reason why you can't stay employed for a long time. But you have to be good at what you do... smile.gif