[darkmighty]

Tbf, those are trivially not mathematically equivalent (even taking profit instead of revenue). Suppose each contracted worker cost $1/yr in salaries, and there were 1000 contractors/1000 in-house employees. Then without including contractors, the profit per employee is (X-1000)/1000 ~ X/1000, while including it is (X-1000)/2000 ~ X/2000, much lower. Including or not contractors does have a potentially large difference.

[daveFNbuck]

The trick here is that contractors aren't employees, so they only affect these metrics by reducing profit.

[mywittyname]

They are mathematically equivalent in the sense that they are both equally worthless measurements for the same reason. In both cases, contractors contribute the the numerator without contributing to the denominator.

Using profit seems slightly better (theoretically, it gauges how effective management is at converting contractor effort into profit). But we all know that you can't compare the term "profits" between industries, whereas, revenue is consistent no matter what your business is.