W3HF has posted some interesting license-number statistics at:

http://www.geocities.com/w3hf/LicenseStats.htm

These numbers are derived from his Callbook collection.

Some points of note:

- There were years in the 1960s-70s when the number of US hams
declined or grew very slowly.

- The Technician class appeared to grow very rapidly for a few years
after 1991. But the Tech Plus was not listed separately from Tech
until 1995. Once that change was made, the Tech Plus class grew very
quickly and the Tech actually declined for a while as licenses were
reclassified.

- At one point, just 14 years ago, there were over 101,000 Novices.

- There were only about 5,000 Extras in 1967, less than 2% of the
total. Conditionals, OTOH, made up about 15% of the total.

It's not clear if the totals include grace-period licenses or not.
From comparisons to other sources it appears that the Callbook numbers
do include grace-period licenses. The grace period was one year when
the license term was 5 years and is now 2 years.

Thanks to W3HF for posting the info.

73 de Jim, N2EY