My perception is strictly anecdotal, based on my experience in the US, in the medium size city where I live, which is neither a tech hub nor a tech desert.

I still feel fairly confident that if the unemployment rate among programmers in the US was to rise to, for example, an enormous 15%, I would be able to keep myself among the 85% that remains employed.

I wonder if your experience, which is quite different from mine, has to do with the differences between labor laws in the US and the UK. In the US, programmers are virtually all non-union, and employers can be fairly choosy in who they keep and who they get rid of.

Is it perhaps the case in the UK that, by law, most downsizing has to be seniority-based rather than merit-based?