One thing worth considering is that the economic situation isn’'t like the early 90’s or even as bad as the early 80’s right now. It’s a lot worse, because all attempts to get the economy moving are nothing more than “pushing on string” all the time. QE doesn’t work, “stimulus infrastructure spending” doesn’t work, and the private sector won’t spend what they don’t have on investing in the business. It isn’t possible to cheaply borrow anymore, so expansion for any business looking to take on new drivers is a real uphill struggle, and a lot less likely to happen now than at any time for the past 30 years.
If you know that your income is going to fall, fall, fall for the next decade then you can sidestep the nasty effects of such downward mobility by cutting your OWN costs rather than let everyone else cut your standard of living whilst you just stand there and take it. If I do £500 one week, and the following week I get nowt, then I can look forward to a rebate on the tax I paid on that first week for example. This builds up over the year, and the 4 figure rebate cheque from HMRC at the end of it is a big help in a year with otherwise sporadic earnings. Getting back the tax you paid isn’t scrounging like some would have it, and more importantly it is something that ANYONE can do - although it DOES work best with PAYE pay.
I like the aspect with agency work that I can pick and choose the days and even the number of hours I want to work. I I fancy a 15 hour shift, I just pick up a supermarket shift for instance, but if I want a full week’s worth, I might elect for a parcel trunk. Not having huge amounts of debt payments to service helps a lot, as let’s face it, the need to take home £500+ a week is often driven by the need to pay out £1000+ a month in interest payments!
If you’re not paying out that kind of interest, you can easily get by on a lot less even down here in the southeast! 
If I were in full time employment right now, I might find myself with either a flat week with no overtime, OR be stuck with a huge contracted working week like 54 hours at a lacklustre hourly rate and no perks. I don’t want to be living and dying for my job, just earn enough to get by, until the long-term economic improvement finally comes. 
I compare this coming decade to the 1930’s rather than the 1970’s. Don’t let the “inflation” feint lead you up the garden path. Our current status is roughly where we were in 1926 - a year which saw the General Strike! We’re not after the stock market crash either, we might well be 3 years before it right now!
Going with this timeline, we’ll see a steepening of the fall in 3 years, a total bottom-out in 6 years, and then a recovery in another five years IF there isn’t a natural disaster like the dust bowl to make it take a lot longer. Hopefully we won’t be needing world war III to complete the downward economic adjustment that the Western Nations seem to be in need of. During this time, being with an agency means having exposure to a lot more employers than being full time at one place that could show you the door overnight, with you then finding yourself at the back of the queue if you left it until THEN to look for agency work, with no one recruiting full-time at all. 
The banks are busy paddling with inflation against the huge current flowing against them down the deflation waterfall right now. If they were “winning” this battle, then interest rates would have long since risen, and economic recovery would have already been kick-started with cheap fixed borrowing whilst rates were low. Of course, cheap fixed rate borrowing has still not OCCURRED whilst rates have been this low for the past 4 years - so neither shall any kind of economic recovery based on newly-borrowed money.
If you stand still at the top of the waterfall (stagnant savings) then you’ll get swept over the edge as soon as your legs are too tired for you to continue standing.
If you paddle up the waterfall, then you’re on a fools errand. You’ll waste all your energies very likely to be swept off at the worst possible height for “damage”!
If you dive off the waterfall, you’ll probably die but you will be totally out of danger if you Don’t die straight away!
Not very good options I guess, but the sensible person is going to be taking diving lessons in this parable I reckon! 
