No, the logic is right.

If you have full-time employees you have to fire them when times get tough. In some countries it’s very hard to fire people and it requires months of notice. These laws encourage companies to choose contractors so they don’t get stuck with employees they can’t fire during tough times.

If you have freelancers you can more flexibly pause, delay, or reduce hours and then resume them again when you need them.

You can also scale freelancers to your workload or ability. With each FTE you’re committing to an extra 40 hours of pay every single week, no exceptions. With a freelancer you could have them do 5 hours one week, 0 hours the next, 40 hours after that. Even at 3-5X the rate it could come out to be less costly if the workload is intermittent.