I looked into this years ago when I worked at investment banks and was astonished to learn that 70% of the IT Department were actually contractors. I may be in

I looked into this years ago when I worked at investment banks and was astonished to learn that 70% of the IT Department were actually contractors. I may be inaccurate on the precise accounting terminology, but essentially a full time employee is a recurring cost, while a contractor is a non-recurring cost, and this makes your books look a lot better to those who aren't paying close attention. During that period of time, it certainly felt that your job was a lot safer if you were a consultant vs FT. They also paid those contractors by the day, not the hour, and it also felt like they kept the FT'ers around for the "free" labor they provided for weekend work- How I even investigated that 70% number is that I was in theory at least relatively high up the totem pole, but got doing real drudgery type weekend work- checkouts after network upgrades and such since my team had so few FT people. I then mucked around with our api a bit and got the actual numbers and saw this wasn't a unique phenomenon to my team.