The people who are going to be able to charge big $$$ in the current climate are those with unusual niche expertise or those who can bill more than one customer at once.

Niche expertise can be in IT but competition will only increase, especially for Java and NET and other mainstream products in which a constant stream of energetic clever people want to claim their place in the sun. For this reason, life may be smoother for people who can build expertise in other business areas. For example, if you've been spending your time providing useful IT service for a particular industry segment you may have quite a good understanding of it, or you may even be coming up with ideas that offer competitive advantage. If so, there may be opportunity to consult more widely in that niche rather than giving your entire creative potential to a single employer for an hourly wage. ;-) Business consultation need not be tool-related, either: business niche experience often revolves around methodology, business re-engineering and other ideas, not necessarily line-by-line code expression. IMHO there are an awful lot of people on UT who could be doing that sort of work, but they enjoy coding and make a conscious decision to stay where they are.

Others do very well by holding classes or addressing an audience. Charging a relatively low hourly rate per attendee can translate into a very high total hourly rate. But you have to make allowance for continuing self-education, peer review and class preparation that cannot be charged out. Classes need to be regular and well-attended before the impressive hourly rate translates into a large annual income.

Others use their business niche expertise to make something really useful that can be sold to multiple customers. If you can keep that going for a year or two, the concept of hourly rate goes away. There are people out there with FP2.x apps still being used by customers who pay small annual fees that add up to over a decade of six-figure annual incomes for effectively nothing.

At this stage, the security that comes from employment with a pay check that may not be as high as people might like but is regular, may be worth a lot. However, nothing is certain and people would do well to consider how they will market themselves and earn $ if things don't pick up.