You don't HAVE to have 5000 hours to apply. You can (and should) apply as soon as you meet their mins which are typically 1000 turbine and ATP eligibility (ATP eligibility varies from 750, 1000, 1200, or 1500 depending on where you got trained). A few still also require 1000 TPIC.
You MIGHT get lucky and get called with very low time.
But for planning purposes right now assume a civilian will need 5000 TT and about 2000 TPIC to maybe get called by the big six. Those jobs pay many millions, for working 10-14 days/month... so there is competition.
You might well get hired by a ULCC with a 1,000+ regional SIC. But you'll probably stay there, since the big boys will prefer TPIC which you won't get for a number of years at a ULCC. So you have to decide, grab the first major job you can (almost all of them are good jobs these days), or hold out for the big six, which will probably be great jobs but are harder to get.
There are of course many other aviation options, but at this exact moment in time the best opportunities exist in pax majors. I'm honestly not even too sure about UPS/FDX right now. I always considered them pretty secure because of the utterly VAST cost and barriers to entry to start up a global package delivery network. But unfortunately the tech zillionaires HAVE those kind of resources and it looks like amazon is hell bent on building their own network. If they do it right (lots of outsourcing, like the regionals) they could keep labor costs low... much, much lower than Purple or Brown. Meas is one of the early entrants in that game, what more do you need to know
