On Roblox, an online gaming platform beloved by Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the site’s 151.5 million daily active users can manage and direct pixelated air traffic through an air traffic control simulator. That’s a coincidence. What isn’t is that the federal government is recruiting this very demographic to monitor airspace in real life as it seeks to plug a decadeslong shortage in key airport staffing.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in an X post this week that the administration has hired more than 2,000 air traffic controllers after an April campaign aimed at recruiting video gamers, meeting 94% of it’s hiring goal, with an additional 2,000 candidates in the pipeline.
The U.S. Transportation Department and Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) push to enlist young people to become air traffic controllers comes as the aviation sector faces a shortage of the skilled employees. A YouTube ad from the Transportation Department in April—set to electric music and featuring clips from games like Fortnite—announced the FAA’s hiring window for air traffic controllers open later that money, boasting the role paid at least $155,000 after three years of work.
“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy said in a statement at the time. “This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”
