Well despite all of the below
There are a lot more Hams now than 40 years ago

And if the decline was 50% in the last 5 years -- guess we would have to
worry.
It was about a 2% decline in 5 years for the USA. Still about 666,000 of us
left though. (was about 678,000 in 2000)
Gawd we are doomed (;-)
At that 2% decline rate we will be a dead dodo in about 500 years (just
kidding - ain't statistics wonderful)

The world population has went up by about 400 Million in 5 years -- does
that mean Ham radio should have increased accordingly. Well then so should
all other human endeavors huh.

Comparing cell phone growth to Amateur radio is apples to oranges.

Ah the age argument -- here in southern calif we are training lots of new
Hams -- how are you doing?
The Tech class population has increased last time I looked.
But agreed - that is a concern.
We do need to infuse the hobby with young hams and there are lots of folks
pursuing that despite your assumption.


Nah I think we are hanging in there -- the hobby is healthy enough at the
present.
Otherwise all the Ham stores would close and we would have to make our own
radios. (;-)
Hey not a bad idea.
--
Caveat Lector (Reader Beware)



"Larry Gauthier (K8UT)" wrote in message
...
Although these raw figures show growth up until 2000, they produce a false
sense of a ham radio as a "healthy hobby".

First - it is not fair to consider 1960 to 2000 - 40 years!! Several
generations of technology have come and gone in that span - hardly an
accurate interval for measuring whether the hobby is "growing" or not.
Let's limit our scope to {roughly} the last decade: 1995 to 2005. These
are the years in which competing technologies - cell phones, computers and
the Internet - have grown by substantial double-digit margins every year
while ham radio remained comparatively stagnant.

- when compared to the global population counts, the percentage licensed
hams in the world versus population has declined.

- looking at the US figures (http://ah0a.org/FCC/Licenses.html) you will
see that US license counts peaked in April of 2003, and are now at a level
lower than they were in June 1997.

- consider the average age of licensed hams (
http://users.crosspaths.net/~wallio/LICENSE.html US figures are available
for comparison... we'll have to extrapolate that other nations are
experiencing a similar trend) the hobby could be seen as being terminally
ill, with very little fresh blood being infused by young hams.

I wish the statistics proved otherwise, but I think your celebration of
the IARU charts is a bit mis-guided.
--
-larry
K8UT
"Caveat Lector" wrote in message
news:BztLd.25649$xt.7545@fed1read07...
Not according to the IARU page at URL:

http://www.iaru.org/statsum00.html

Sez
In 1960 there were 399,000 Amateur stations world wide
In 2000 there were 2,789,720 Amateur stations world wide

I suspect the figures have increased since 2000
--
Caveat Lector