You sound like you are the type of worker and person, companies will keep through the hard times.
Your story about your friend reminds me of many people who stayed with my long time employer after they refused an offer of a great early out package.
I took the package and never looked back. A few months later that year, some friends in the home office were given a Kinko box to pack with their personal stuff in. Security thugs took the box and escorted the people out into the parking lot where mobile offices/trailers were parked in a controlled portable high fenced area.
They signed their papers and were escorted out of those gates into another gated area with a portable covered stand like a bus stop. Then, their cars were driven up to them by valets with their Kinko boxes on the front right floor. Security personnel were very noticeable around this area. There was one way out for the discharged, and that put them on the streets.
George 76 and I have had a gallows humor re the Kinko boxes for years. We first started the Kinko Box stuff when Dan Blather and Mary Mapes were fired for getting caught lying about GW.
Likely, more than twenty percent are looking for a full-time job.
The repeated enemedia claims of nine percent is just more garbage.