I disagree. You can find well paying contracting gigs and well paying employee contracts. From my anecdotal experience, finding these jobs require different sets of skills and access to different people networks.

Recruiters will rarely find you well paying contracting gigs but they can find you some good employee contracts.

Contracting is more tax efficient with some planning and an investment strategy (for now, tax hikes and new ir35 are incoming).

Last time I hired I couldn't find a junior with more than zero coding skills for less than 30k, so not sure what are you talking about. I assume there must be a market for cheap developers who can't code - probably all those guys that try to squeeze in during interviews without knowing how to code.

I've also seen a bunch of seniors being underpaid on salaries that haven't been updated for literally 15 years - but if you're not job hopping in this industry, you won't go very far.