Slow Code wrote:
1: No more

Amateur radio is in decline and you think putting Morse code back in as
a requirement would help?

Bwhahahahaha.
----------------
Statistics courtesy of George McCouch, K3UD.

Total active individual licenses as of May 14, 2000:
Novice - 49,329
Tech/+ - 334,254
General - 112,677
Advanced - 99,782
Extra - 78,750

Total all classes - 674,792

Total active individual licenses as of June 30, 2006:
Novice - 24,877 (-49.57%) (-24,456)
Tech/+ - 320,242 (-4.20%) (-14,012)
General - 132,758 (+17.82%) (+20,081)
Advanced - 71,753 (-28.13%) (-28,029)
Extra - 108,184 (+37.38%) (+29,434)

Total All Classes: 657,814 (-1,405 since the March 2006 reporting
period)

Total all classes (5/14/00) - 674,792
Total all Classes (4/21/03) - 687,860
Total all classes (9/6/04 ) - 674,788
Total all classes (6/30/06) - 657,814

Total loss of 16,978 since 5/14/2000 (Was 674,792)
Total loss of 16,974 since 9/6/2004 (Was 674,788)
Total Loss of 30,066 since 4/2003 (all time high of 687,860)

We lost:
842 Novice
1,088 General
1,157 Advanced
3,087 Total

We Gained:
1,258 Tech/+
424 Extra
1,682 Total

This is an overall 1,405 decline since the March reporting period
and averages 467 per month for the quarter.

For the months March April and May the new licenses issued
break down as follows.

6,999 Tech/+ 89.3% **
627 General 8.0%
217 Extra 2.7%

Total new licenses issues during the period - 7,849

** These numbers come from the very interesting and comprehensive
website of Joe Speroni, AH0A http://www.ah0a.org

Numbers of US population and the number of hams at the start of each
decade from 1930.

Year Population # Hams Growth Rate
1930 123,202,624 19,000
1940 132,164,569 56,000 194%
1950 151,325,798 87,000 55%
1960 179,323,175 230,000 164%
1970 203,211,926 263,918 15%
1980 226,545,805 393,353 49%
1990 248,709,873 502,677 28%
2000 281,421,906 682,240 36%
2006 657,814 -3.6 %

The 2006 number was as of June 30, 2006.