A lot of pax are actually leaving the likes of BA because of the economic downturn and moving to lo-cos. The pax loads at EZY have been up quite a fair amount of the past few months whereas BA's have started to dip
Indeed, and incidentally this is what used to keep Southwest Airlines profitable during the bad times too. But an important element in this is that Easy (like Southwest) fly to the major airports at the cities they serve. Ryanair don't, and therefore will not attract as much of the business traffic.
It wouldn't surprise me if Easy earn more revenue during this recession than Ryanair.