I'm sure there are a lot of companies where hiring people is (perhaps inexplicably) much harder than taking in consultants. I think some of these people are taking advantage of situations where employers are wrongly preferring employees to consultants.
Also perhaps hiring standards have just become too crazy. Most tech companies make us jump through so many hoops that only the top lets say 1% make it through. Well that same 1% can probably also make it through every other company's hoops too. So theoretically they can get as many jobs as they want.
But companies don't want to hire the top 25% or middle 25% they leave these hoops to filter average candidates out
