Comment by clutchdude

Possibly but I'd argue it's far from a smoking gun.

The sequester of 2013 did a number on things and they hired to maximum capacity in the years after to make up for lost time. It stands to reason that by filling training to the max, they'd have more washouts due to lack of more attention during training.

> The sequestration in 2013 and subsequent hiring freeze resulted in the FAA not hiring any new controllers for nearly 9 months across FY 2013 and FY 2014. The effects of this disruption on the hiring pipeline, as well as the FAA Air Traffic Academy’s operations, were substantial.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_staf...