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

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.