[bhuga]

I was consulting in 08-10, the last tough time. Anecdotally, it was ~fine, but you need to be okay dealing with more chaos in your life. Your budget comes out of different pools of money than the FTEs, which means you can be hired during layoffs, but those pools of money don't "recur" the same way, which means you're going to have to have several clients ready to sell/pitch to. You're always 2-3 months from being "laid off", but because of that, you have some control over what might happen.

[andrewmcwatters]

As a follow up to my other comment here, this is also my experience. Risk increases proportional to the size of your firm, but so must your prices.