I got laid off as well as everyone else in the whole (small) company, except 5 execs who were required to try to sell the company. It was a small, highly innovative pharmaceutical company, and I was one of two lead scientists there. All this happened a month before the economy turned sour, mainly because the company's venture capital investors were really stupid. Now many larger companies are eying them to try and pick it up for peanuts, and well below what the technology we produced is worth.
Before that I was an academic researcher doing post-doctoral work. I got fed up having to depend on grants to get paid, with no job security. Most recently I got burned in the private sector, where funding was provided by venture capitalists who can promise you anything, but then renege without consequence. Now I've gone back into academia, but in a university appointment that's not contingent on receiving grants for research. It's somewhat immune from the economy's woes, but if things don't improve within a few years it may knock-on to me. Then again, if things don't improve within a few years, we'll probably have seen Armageddon anyway. I'm a happy camper, finally.