That's not "whatever they want it to mean". That's industry standard terminology. And it's not all low-skill positions. A friend of mine is a PhD optics researc

That's not "whatever they want it to mean". That's industry standard terminology. And it's not all low-skill positions. A friend of mine is a PhD optics researcher and he was a Google contractor (the employee of a third party kind) for a few years before moving on to an FTE position elsewhere.