The shortage is an imaginary crisis. Just like when Senator Blackburn asked the new FAA Administrator if we should raise the retirement age because of the pilot shortage. They she pointed out a flight that she was on that was delayed 3 hours because her original pilot crew timed out and it took a couple hours to "find other pilots". She said if we had more pilots sitting around the airport waiting for flights to open up that there would not be as many delayed flights.

Fortunately the FAA admin guy just smiled and said it doesn't work that way. He also said its dead in the water until ICAO changes their age.