See the FAA's US Civil Airmen Statistics spreadsheet for the overall big picture [1]. Specifically, the "Pilot Total w/o Student Category" fell from 490k in 201

See the FAA's US Civil Airmen Statistics spreadsheet for the overall big picture [1]. Specifically, the "Pilot Total w/o Student Category" fell from 490k in 2012 to 470k in 2021, despite the number of instructors growing from 98k to 121k. The number of students has skyrocketed from 120k in 2012 to 250k in 2021 but it's just not translating to commercially viable pilots: we added 30k students last year but lost several hundred airline pilots and only gained 600 commercial pilots. The number of PPLs fell from 188k in 2012 to 161k in 2021. [1] https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/civil_airmen_statistics https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/c...