Whole sector shrinking, should I change fields? - any advice?

Many of the people I know in my field were laid off this year, including me as an IT help-desk technician. It has been a long 10 weeks. I have transferable skills but no direct experience elsewhere. How did you choose?

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it 4 months ago, and it settled down once I kept a simple log of every call and form.