A little, but not much. Ironically, we find ourselves doing a lot of articles about the recession, money saving and budgeting!
I don't know whether you can post this here, but to answer your question... yes it is affecting a great deal with far less customers who are willing to venture into new business and thus getting far less orders than expected...obviously we writers are not recession proof..
Nope. In fact, I think it may be increasing. As money gets tight, more and more people buy stuff online, because it is cheaper. Of course that only applies to certain niches...but still.
actually I agree with that too; clients are looking for extremely low prices (on the contrary to which high quality work is also demanded at the same time) which is taking a heck out of everybody!
Since writers are operating in a market where payment is low then I doubt that there will be a major impact. That said, there's probably a few people trying to get it done on the cheap as a result.