In July 2018, the FAA posted an announcement that yielded only 240 well-qualified applicants from the CTI/veteran pool. That was a substantial drop from the 611 applicants that were selected from a similar announcement in FY 2017. Because of the 10 percent balancing requirement between the pools, FAA was only able to select 264 applicants from the general public pool, and FAA was not able to pursue 783 otherwise well-qualified candidates from that pool. If this trend continues, this will have a major impact on the FAA’s ability to hire enough controllers to meet its operational needs.