Parents often worry that obsessive video game playing will keep their sons from finding productive careers. The Federal Aviation Administration has a different perspective.
The FAA has long struggled to recruit air traffic controllers. At the end of 2025, the FAA had a bit more than 13,000 controllers on the payroll. That was a decrease of 6 percent compared with 2015 despite the fact that, from 2015 to 2024, the number of flights jumped by around 10 percent.
Some believe that part of the problem was the Obama administration’s focus on DEI.
“During the Obama administration more than 2,000 qualified and vetted men and women were lined up to become air traffic controllers,” former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who’s involved in a class-action lawsuit over the allegations, wrote on X last year. They were removed from the air traffic controller queue, Laxalt continued, because “Obama’s FAA decided they weren’t racially diverse enough.”
Since then, the FAA has struggled to find qualified applicants. From 2017 to 2022, the FAA had more than 106,000 people apply for the job. But meeting the requirements is difficult. One of the toughest is the aptitude test. It measures a person’s spatial orientation, concentration and ability to think logically. These are obviously important skills for anyone who directs air traffic. Applicants must also pass a medical exam and security screening.
Fewer than 10 percent of applicants meet these and other requirements. But the acceptance rate can be even lower, as a December 2025 GAO report detailed. Of around 106,000 applicants without prior experience, the FAA hired around 4,000. Just 2,300 had graduated or were still in training.
In a private company, that would be an all-hands-on-deck crisis. There would be new recruitment strategies and rewards for employees who solved this pressing problem. The government works with far less urgency.
But under the leadership of Sean Duffy, the Department of Transportation tried something different. It began targeting video game players. The theory is that they might possess the “unique and transferable skillset, including high cognitive functions, spatial awareness, multitasking and strategy and problem solving,” that air traffic controllers need.
After the campaign began in April, the FAA met 94 percent of its hiring goal, the “fastest time ever to reach target,” Mr. Duffy said in a post on X. He also said a streamlined hiring process has put more than 2,000 candidates into the pipeline, “reaching the Academy quicker than any class before them.”
Innovation doesn’t happen often in government, but when it does, it should be recognized. It’s good to see the FAA successfully level up its recruitment efforts.
