Economy affects home prices in the far away prices first: tracy, stockton, brentwood, etc. It does not impact home prices in, say, Palo Alto, that much, because homeowners in Palo Alto can hang on to their homes during the downtime.
I have not heard much about layoffs. Yes, Microsoft Mountain View has moved employees to Redmond. Netapp been laying off since 2011. Cisco is the same thing.
Unless the stock market crashes, the economy can absorb all developers, etc. Middle management, I donno.