Contractors get paid more for the same job as a salaried employee to make up for the fact that they're not getting any benefits and don't have any guarantee of long-term employment. Unless they're taking this into account somehow, comparing contractors to salaried employees isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. It's likely that contractors are getting paid more on average anyway, but not nearly to the degree that it looks like based on this data.

Unless we are talking about the hourly wage paid to an agency. This can often double what the contractor is being paid.

Contracting is lucrative ... until the work stops.

At which point you are able to state, with enormous confidence, how much money you aren't making.

People tend to mentally multiply my weekly rate by about 50 and then get a bit standoffish. The forget that it's more like 40 if I hustle to keep the pipeline full.

And, as an Australian, that I have to pay my own superannuation out of that amount. That's 9% of my income accounted for right there, before tax.