Steve's post makes an interesting point - if they sack us all, who'll buy anything?

My current company is in a similar situation. We are small, and everyone knows everyone. After some initial rounds of redundancy (mostly chaff, but some wheat), we have now all voluntarily gone on to 4 days weeks to avoid any more job cuts. For the moment, that is.

The only means you have to protect yourself really is to keep your own skill set up to date. In The Pragmatic Programmer, (which I recommend) Andy Hunt & David Thomas talk about your skill portfolio. They suggest that you should treat your skill set like your share portfolio - invest regularly, diversify, mix high-risk-high-return investments with low-risk-low-return investments. Good advice, I think.