Why Japan still needed carriers after Midway

Would Japan have been better served by avoiding a post-Midway carrier program because it lacked trained pilots?

No; it still needed carriers, but it should have prepared far better for its known pilot and industrial limitations.

Carriers remained essential to any viable Japanese naval effort, so stopping construction would not solve the problem created by a shrinking trained-aircrew pool. Japan therefore had little practical choice but to continue a carrier program after Midway. The deeper failure was that Japanese planners understood their own limitations yet did not prepare a strategy and replacement system around them. New flight decks could preserve a necessary capability, but they could not by themselves correct the lack of trained replacements and broader strategic preparation.