Big Gubmaint seems to be the main impetus behind much of big business spending and now control as well.. in fact, much of each is melded with the other and it is hard to tell them apart all too oft these days.
In the Fed govt, civilian employee (non-contractor employees) hiring was frozen to all but current govt employee’s for well over 10 years (in DoD anyway).
So new hires were lower paying contractees generally and the govt employee work force kept getting older (and having more years of work in govt...thus more pay). Lack of new blood. Remember all the articles about the greying of the Fed work force? Young folks just could not get hired into the Fed civil service for many years with small exception.