> I can really only talk about the UK but I'd agree there has been a move away from better paid technical contract positions. Mostly this has been due to policy

> I can really only talk about the UK but I'd agree there has been a move away from better paid technical contract positions. Mostly this has been due to policy change to remove tax advantages that can come with contracting. To be fair, the pre IR35 situation was super dodgy. To counterpoint that, I live in Ireland where there's absolutely no tax advantage to being a contractor (slightly less NI equivalent, way less benefits and a special dividend tax to prevent those kinds of shenanigans) and yet there appears to be a thriving contractor market, so it feels like there's more going on here. Now a bunch of those contract positions are far too low in terms of day rate, so maybe it's just an attempt to cut costs while giving naive people what looks like a good deal, because they don't account for all the costs.