They did the same thing with trucking. Told everyone it was a solid middle class career in dire need of workers. Convinced a bunch of states and the feds to foot the bill for truck driving schools.

They never needed more drivers, what they needed was more people to sucker in to predatory truck leases. They get new graduates to sign a lease for a truck. The lease forces them to only work for the company that leases them the truck, forcing them to accept whatever mileage rate the company decides to give them. Once the driver gets sick of that, the company takes the truck and leases it to the next person they recruit directly from trucking school(paid for by the government).