>Contractors in the US are also paid significantly more than employees.

Not really surprising all other things being equal. Contractors are often not getting benefits which can be more than a quarter of the total comp package.

Furthermore, contractors are often assumed to be being paid on an as-needed basis with less downtime like training that are factors with full-time employees.

When I had clients, a had a pretty high effective daily rate. But that didn't really translate into outsized take-home pay because so much "free" work went into being able to charge that sometime high daily rate.