What if the economy is really bad?

Then have a plan B.

Move in with your parents / siblings / someone?

you take a lower paying job?

So bad that you can't find a job for 12 months? At a certain point, you take any job you can get to sustain yourself while you look for a job in your field. You should be able to buy yourself plenty of time to focus full-time on searching for a new job and the chances you go 12 months is highly unlikely. Still, if that were to happen, take on another job you don't love while you continue your search.

That said, not finding a job in your field for 12 months is a situation we as people like to prepare for, but are likely to not happen.

If the economy looks super bad, dramatically cut spending to stretch out the last 6 months. At a certain point you can also negotiate with lenders or just not pay.

If you are female in Shell, save all your money by 49 and be ready to retire if you have retired from the company. No further tech gigs.

They have some dudes in supply chain who play dirty games over other women who went to arbitration (was not me..never been to arbitration). Will be impossible to have them caught. You will have no dignity when they are done. It is complicated how they do it and at best you will wind up with a best guess of involved parties as there is no legal support in the EEOC after 365 days they will wait.

Some of the involved aren’t even with the company. They have a fully repeatable process for tech workers.