I used this once when I was laid off. Worked for about 1/2 my salary to start, but was employed in like a day or two. (And still had 4 weeks of severance coming in). Once i had a bunch of 5* reviews I was able to command more than I was previously earning. (I was pretty Junior at the time).

One caveat is that Contracting time is kinda a career blackhole in that if you go back to employment you're both kinda weird because you're used to contracting, and a lot of managers/interviewers don't really know how to see you're experience when you're doing 3 month contracts, sometimes layered, over the span of years. They don't really get it. (Nor realize that contracting is usually really dense experience, so actually more valuable)

This might work for some people, but it's not really a substitute for salaried work for me, nor would I hope to stick around long enough for my rates to rise to something approaching the low end of the U.S. FTE market.