Just for discussion purposes ... I was hired at PanAm in 1987. PanAm had not hired in MANY years.

In fact, before they could interview "new hires" they had to recall the rest of the furloughees (many of whom had been furloughed for 18 years).

To my surprise almost all of the furloughees came back to work. Some of them had not flown the entire time so PanAm Training changed the syllabus to incorporate extra (non-graded) sims for FE's upgrading to FO.