Be careful of comparing consulting rates and salaries. Here's some math:
Compare, say, a $60,000 salary to an hourly rate, say, $50 per hour.
To do apples to apples, you've got to figure 40 hours per week. As a consultant, you don't generally work fulltime--you need to spend time marketing yourself, dead time between gigs, admin time doing invoicing, collections on non-or-slow-paying clients. So in actuality 10% of your time is minimum, it's probably more, but we'll use 10. So now we're comparing to average 36 hours billed per week.
That's $90,000 per year. But wait--a typical benefit package is worth at least $15,000--Insurance on your own is $700 monthly for good family coverage ($8400 year), plus 401k matching contribution, profit-sharing, bonuses, and many other perks of real value--cell phone bills, health club, car in some cases, etc, etc. Now you're at $75,000.
Now what about that 3 weeks vacation--that's 120 hours lost for the hourly consultant, or $6000. And don't forget your business share of FICA, 6% of gross (you pay the other 6% in either case), or another $5000+. Errors and Omissions insurance, that takes a chunk too.
So we're at less than $64,000 now. Not so much better than the $60k salary. There are probably other things I've left out, but the bottom line is--don't look at a $50 per hour rate for the job you're looking for and then expect $100,000 salary for the same job.
--Jim