I work in engineering IT, often there literally is no work.

I ask and ask, there will be something in 3 months or something but there are looong down periods. Or something will be blocked for 2+ months and our team doesn't have the political power to do anything about it (and it doesn't make financial sense for the company).

It's actually good staffing, I support it from a WLB perspective, kind of like firefighters... at the times you really need them you want to have enough people of the right caliber to be able to move on something quick.. but a side effect of it is long down periods.