Many people who are or were controllers until recently are my peers. Several people I knew took the training and the jobs after the controller's strike. We were all young, and in places like Mississippi or Louisiana, there were not that many good-paying jobs in 1980. All of them were a bit conflicted as they knew the main reasons for the strike were not money but working conditions which they soon found themselves under, but it was a deep recession in the early Reagan years, and some people were age sleeping under bridges. My housemate today does believe I was an all-night waitress moonlight as a cocktail waitress and country-western singer at a bar, but it astonishes her. That was highly unusual for a college graduate, even in Germany during her parent's generation (of which I am the same).
But I am 66 now, and those peers would be between 64 and 70 now (I don't recall exactly, but they were all around my age at the time). So even if they worked until they were forced to retire at 60 or 65 (I'm not sure what it is for air traffic control), they are gone now, and so are their decades of expertise. So there are, working conditions that were never changed much, some of which go against modern science regarding exhaustion and sleep patterns. Not to mention some regional airports that only have one controller at a time, instead of the two that used to be mandated (or so I have heard, I hope it isn't the case).
Finally, and probably most important of all, the airlines long ago made as much money as they could, cutting fares and undercutting each other. Now they are stuck with saving money by limiting crews to the lowest possible standards and delaying maintenance and extra training as long as possible. My understanding (someone in the industry, please chime in as I could be wrong) but my understanding, is that the pilot's pay, especially starting, is now reasonably low for the job and that for flight attendants, it is worse.
In the old days, it was enough to promise young women (and it was always young women) an exciting chance to see the world and maybe catch the eye of a rich man. Now few young or even middle-aged men and women want to have horrible schedules, work extremely hard with an often difficult public, and be away from home for days when they can make more money doing jobs with more regular hours. Or, they go into things that pay better, like working in a busy hospital. Being an air steward or stewardess was never that much fun, and today people have alternatives.