This is often said, but misses entirely the forest for the trees. The ATC shortage is not in the pipeline of candidates, so this is irrelevant - in fact there'

This is often said, but misses entirely the forest for the trees. The ATC shortage is not in the pipeline of candidates, so this is irrelevant - in fact there's a backlog of people who have been accepted. It's in the training of those candidates - because it's an intensive training there isn't enough staff to increase the amount of people being trained at the same time, which is very insufficient. Furthermore, after finishing their training, folks are posted randomly and some refuse (and thus leave the ATC job) because they don't want to move them and any potential family to the middle of nowhere. One video by a reliable source (line training captain) on the topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jqa83PrZSVE https://youtube.com/watch?v=jqa83PrZSVE