Take a look at job adds for major defense contractors in jurisdictions that require salary disclosure. Wherever all that defense money is going, it's not engineering salaries. I'm a non-DoD government contractor and even I scoff at the salary ranges that Boeing/Lockheed/Northrup post, which often feature an upper bound substantially lower than my current salary while the job requires an invasive security clearance (my current job doesn't). And my compensation pales in comparison to what the top tech companies pay.