Really, what do YOU do for a living?
Actually, I have personal experience with lay offs in the tech sector - first time back in the mid 80's when I first started out at Texas Instruments, last time in 2001 when I was a Product Manager for a large computer OEM and again in 2002 from a start-up.
My own story - I have no assumption it's reflective of anyone else's experience, but it's just one data point from on person - laid off in early 2001 (was making mid-90's), but with pretty good luck and with right skills at right place and right time, landed at a start-up that was still flushed with capital, actually made a lot more (135K, and I'll be the first to admit I was overpaid, but hey, if they wanted to pay me that ...), well that little ride didn't last, like a lot other start-ups, reality check hits and laid off in early summer of 2002. Had a few interviews in the two three months in the summer afer the lay-off, but the only solid offer was for a tech marketing job in Toronto, Canada, declined, didn't want to move to Canada (although if I did I would have been an American taking away jobs from deserving Canadians) Pretty much no activities at all for through and Fall of 2002, did some part time work for another boot strapped start-up, very little money, but kept me occupied and engaged in the industry. In mid Nov got a contract QA (e-commerce infrastructure, connecting CMS to app server) project manager gig, paid what works out to be 80K per year, but as it was a short term contract it ended in Jan. Spent Feb working part time with the boot strapped start-up again. Begin to see hiring activities picking up, more interviews. Got a contract gig that paid equivalent of $95K per year doing IT project management in global supply chain systems, job is supposed to run through Sep, but still actively looking, things do look better, getting semi-steady interviews for what I want to do,i.e. product management and marketing, while no solid offers yet, the pace is picking up a lot quicker and much more active compared to last year, and am also still getting calls once a week or 10 days for about potential IT project management contract opportunities. So I do see, from my own vantage point, an uptick in the tech job sector.
So, things aren't exactly the late 90's gravy train, but not totally hopelessly bleak from where I sit either. While I have gone through two lay-offs in the last 24 months,except for three or four months last year, I have been able to get reasonably paid work related to my industry background in one form or another, and while my pay has came down from the internet bubble height, it's still within the band of what the market seems to think product managers and project managers ought to be paid - low 80's to mid 90's.
So you ask what I do? That's what I do ....
I don't stew much or whine about why I lost my job or whose fault it must be, I focus on what I can do next and go get it - there were no marketing jobs, so I went back to project management, there weren't permanent jobs, so I went to a series of contract gigs, there wasn't a well paid full time job, so I picked up something part time for a few months, I even started to write my own business plan during the down time, and now I think things are beginning to look better. It has worked Ok for me.