I was about your age when the economy went through a recession. I remembered being worried at the time, but I got through it without much difficulty. In addition to the advice given by the other posters about, I would add that it is important to keep your job skills current. People with good job skills can usually find work, even in a recession.
At about the time I started working full-time, the PC trend was just beginning. Several of my co-workers didn't think they needed to learn how to use a computer even though they had many working years left. Most of them were subsequently caught up in downsizings (they are pretty common in Corporate America even when there is no recession) and they never found comparable jobs/pay.
Not so long ago I ran into a woman in her late 50s. She had lost her job as a customer service rep/call taker when her company relocated and she could not find a new job, even through a temp agency. This surprised me because I thought customer service/call-taking skills were pretty marketable. When I mentioned my surprise, she told me she was a victim of age discrimination. However, as our conversation progressed, she told me that all of her prospective employers were looking for someone with computer skills and she did not know how to operate a computer. She also told me she had not taken any of the free courses offered by her temp agency. She felt that she should be employable solely for her customer service knowledge and that her prospective employers were overlooking her many talents by insisting upon computer skills. She also felt she could learn whatever computer skills she needed on the job.
While I have no doubt she was talented in many respects, I knew she was destined to be working low-paying jobs for the rest of her career because she did not keep up her job skills. Few employers want to provide the type of detailed training this person needs. That is true now and it is especially true in a recession.
All this is to say, if you look at job postings for your type of work (and you should do this on a regular basis) and you repeatedly see a skill/knowledge requirement you can't meet, then you should figure out a way to acquire that skill/knowledge because you will mostly likely need it to stay employed or find alternate employment.
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