Again - didn't happen, did have to reduce my rate for a short time once or twice. I used the opportunity to stuff my resume a bit.
I've known a few guys that have had tough times in downturns, but they've usually had experience in stuff that was obsolete and haven't kept their skills current. e.g. I knew a guy who was an oracle DBA for 30 years, the writing has been on the wall for this for years, I got out of it a long time before, but he was getting paid well and just kept his head in the sand, sure enough one day it dried up.
It's not like your fifty and have no useful skills, but any one with no useful skills regardless of age will find things tough in a downturn. If you're any age and have good skills then you'll get a job.
What I'm trying to say it's not an age thing, its a relevant skills thing. If you have entry level skills because all the stuff you've done is no longer useful, then you'll be competing in a job market against graduates and yes, you're going to have a bad time.
I've been an assembler programmer, a forth programmer, a progress programmer etc and if I'd stuck to them blindly years ago then things would have been bad. Now I'm a swift and C# programmer who does agile and things are good and will be for the next few years, if things change then, change you must. There's no point in arguing with it.
Indeed if you're fifty and have skills that are current plus years of industry experience then I'd argue the opposite - if you come up against a new graduate with the same experience at the same price,and you have all this other experience on top then who'd say no?