Or is it just cleaver marketing by universities and flight schools ? Those of us that have been around enough have seen this repeated time and time again over since deregulation (young guys feel free to google airline deregulation)
My story, was a commercial pilot, left the industry to single handedly raises my kids, retired from that career at 49, was always active in aviation, own my own plane, continued adding ratings, completed my atp last May, so I'm current there, started applying at regionals, and found some success and some very comical situations that made me go " hmmmm these guys don't act like they need pilots" some regionals like empire and Great Lakes were until recently posting on there web sites, 121 experience preferred ! A few places were very down to earth, but then there were a few that were over the top, two regionals wouldn't even interview me because I lost my original pilots log book that dated from 1986 to 1990, even though I have multiple and recent 8710's one had a hard time with me not having my original training records lol so here's my thoughts, one there's only a pilot shortage in the since that the airlines and regionals don't have 30 applications to choose from for 10 slots they need to fill, they only have 20, so they call that a shortage, notice the pay hasn't gone up dramatically? Shoot even Great Lakes has found a way to keep pay down by going 135, two which I know first hand from my son, there is and is about ready to be even more military guys on the streets looking for jobs and the carriers know this. Of course then again I could be wrong lol