europe
We are also shortstaffed in general too. I work at eurocontrol and,luckily, management has realised and we're trying to cacth up with demand. But next few years are going to be interesting (pardon the metaphore). I know DFS are also on the ball trying to hire direct entry controllers as they stopped some time ago with their ab-initio intake (we did lower it a lot and now we are trying to raise it again but unfortunately it'll take time before that has an effect: in average we turn someone from scratch into a controller in over 2 and half years)
Read some time ago overall europe lacks a 20% of controllers (unevenly spread through, some places more,some less) but in general was a combination of bean counting and the post 9/11 predictions (it wouldn't go up so much, the ciclycal trend in aviation till then, etc...)
Back to the oven now,
A.