An hypothesis from my own consulting: firing an employee can be somewhat difficult, and their salary has quite some taxes on top. At my previous startup we’d rule-of-thumb calculate someone as costing us 140% of their pre-tax salary.

Put these two together and a freelancer becomes an interesting proposition for some tasks. In Germany I could bill roughly 2.5x my after-tax salary. You also incur no other costs such as equipment and illness-as—a-loss. And… you’re really easy to fire when COVID comes around.