On Mar 10, 9:32�pm, (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
In article ,
* * * * "Dee Flint" writes:

wrote in message
oups.com...

[snip]

Total all classes - increase of 89

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73 de Jim, N2EY

Well if we continue at this pace, that will mean 0.35% *growth in one year.

Which fits right into my prediction of 0% to 1% growth!

And I'll take 0.35% growth over a decline.

But what is completely unknown at this point is whether the growth
will continue. After the 2000 restructuring, the license numbers
climbed for about three years - and then began to decline, until now
they are well below what they were before the restructuring of 2000.


Except it fails to take into account hams who die who's licenses will
remain in the count for as much as 10 years afterwards. *

That's always been part of the statistics, Bill. It's part of the
reason I exclude licenses that are in the grace period.

And statistics
show ham radio is a very grey hobby and getting greyer all the time.

Those statistics need to be seen in the context of the US population.

First, the US population is getting older, too. More people are living
longer, having fewer children, and having them later in life.
According to the Census Bureau, the median age for the US population
(half older, half younger) is now over 39 years! From 1990 to 2000, it
rose by more than four years.

Second, while we occasionally read stories of young children earning
an amateur license, in reality there are, and have always been, very
few hams under the age of 10 years. So if we remove the under-10
population from consideration, the median age of amateurs should be
somewhere around 50 years.

73 de Jim, N2EY