In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

wrote:

These are the numbers of amateur licenses held by individuals on the
stated dates:

As of May 14, 2000:

Novice - 49,329
Technician - 205,394
Technician Plus - 128,860
General - 112,677
Advanced - 99,782
Extra - 78,750

Total Tech/TechPlus - 334,254

Total all classes - 674,792

As of December 31, 2004:

Novice - 29,765 (decrease of 19,564)
Technician - 265,534 (increase of 60,140)
Technician Plus - 54,152 (decrease of 74,708)
General - 138,287 (increase of 25,610)
Advanced - 77,948 (decrease of 21,834)
Extra - 106,087 (increase of 27,337)

Total Tech/TechPlus - 319,686 (decrease of 14,568)

Total all classes - 671,773 (decrease of 3019)
73 es HNY de Jim, N2EY

So Jim, filtering out the big drop due to the "honeydo" Technicians
dropping out, what are the numbers?

You see them above, Mike.

Of course some "honeydo" Techs, Novices and Tech Pluses are dropping out. And
some of the older hams are dying off. But beyond that it's all speculation.

When we see that big 14.5K drop in
Technicians, I would assume that some of the drop was due to upgrading,
but most to that dropoff.

There's no way to tell from the data.

Remember that the number of Tech Pluses is dropping for three reasons:

1) Licenses allowed to expire
2) Upgrades to General and Extra
3) Tech Pluses renewed as Technicians

If the rules are simply left as-is, there will be no more Tech Pluses in 5
years and 4 months from now. They will all have gone one of the three routes
listed above.

All in all, when considering that big deficit, it looks like we could
be climbing out of that hole eventually?

We were told in 1990 that dropping the code test for Tech would cause growth.
We got some growth in the short term. Then we were told in the late 1990s that
dropping 13 and 20 wpm, and simplifying the writtens, would cause growth. Again
we got some growth in the short term.

In neither case did we get long term growth.

Perhaps the problem isn't the tests?

73 de Jim, N2EY