I'm an European IT professional who lives on the East Coast for more than a decade. You for sure can find 6-12 months gigs, but my experience is that it will take time to find the good ones, that pay well and don't treat their contractors as second class citizens. You need to build a network and that may take years. Also ageism in IT industry exists. For people over 50 the expectation is one to be in the management or maybe in very niche industry that has high demand for IT professionals. I think your quality of life will go south in NJ. You should look into this from many angles and payment is only one of them.