The article linked below is a pretty good one touching on a couple of choke points in pilot supply, the CFI situation among them:
“They said, ‘Please do not change the ATP requirement,’ because all of their instructors are students who are completing the program and [then] sticking around for about a year until they get enough time to go to the airlines.
If you get rid of the [ATP] requirement that makes them stay here, then we won’t have any instructors. We are having to cap enrollment because there are not enough flight instructors—and aircraft fleets are ageing, and there are not enough Designated Pilot Examiners [DPEs] from the FAA. These three choke points are causing a slower throughput than what we need to meet the demand, none of which has to do with the ATP certificate,” said Collins.
At ERAU, high turnover of flight instructor staff has proven to be a turbulent problem. Byrnes explained, “it’s definitely not difficult for us to recruit flight instructors, because it’s a transient position that serves as a stepping stone to the regional airlines or corporate aviation. It’s not a destination career. I have more than 200 flight instructors at any given time, which creates a lot of training standardization. They come and work for us for about a year and then leave when they get their minimum requirements and move on to the next career step.
We have about an 85 percent annual turnover rate of our CFI staff. We are definitely seeing that there is not a shortage of people, but an incredible amount of turnover and shortage at the upper end with CFIs and flight standards personnel.”
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-n...pilot-pipeline