Can air traffic controllers keep calm and carry on — without pay?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

There’s one job that gets all the attention during a government shutdown: air traffic controllers. Today on the show, we spotlight why this job has taken on outsize political influence and one controller’s experience during the longest shutdown on record.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:02.0	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
0:13.8	I'm Whalen Wong.
0:15.0	And joining us for the next three months as co-host is Stephen Bissaha from the Gulf
0:20.0	States Newsroom. Welcome aboard, Stephen.
0:23.3	Yeah, thank you, Waylon. I'm joining you from the new official indicator Birmingham Studios.
0:29.8	Ooh, very exciting. And you're here just in time for Jobs Friday. Yay! And, you know, it's another weird one because we should be getting updated numbers from the
0:40.7	Bureau of Labor Statistics.
0:42.4	However, the government shutdown means we are not getting the BLS jobs report for the second
0:47.3	month in a row.
0:48.8	Instead, we'll look at the numbers from the company's ADP and Ravellio Labs.
0:53.4	ADP says private employers added 42,000 jobs
0:57.0	in October. Reveal Labs, which also factors in public sector jobs, says the U.S. economy actually
1:03.1	lost 9,000 jobs. And the Chicago Fed forecast the unemployment rate at 4.36%. That's up from 4.1% last year.
1:14.7	So we've got other data sources partly filling the void left by the BLS. But there are other government
1:20.3	functions that are much harder to find alternatives for and jobs that can't really be replaced.
1:25.9	One example, TSA agents.
1:28.2	Earlier this week, our colleague here, Sierra Wada, spent three hours just in the security line at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
1:35.9	We called her as she was about to board her flight.
1:38.1	So how long have you been at the airport?
1:40.4	So I got here at 5.30 this morning.
1:43.5	It's one right now. So brain's not working at this point. I can't think about how many hours. Long, long day.
	...

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