KD0TLS: Declines

  Since it's the New Year, I will take a moment to address something beyond APRS. It's something I have had several 'discussions' with other hams about over the past couple of years, but these have never been constructive. For some reason, this issue isn't being discussed at all by the ham-related media. 

 When I lay out the facts and data, most hams reject the premise because, if it were true they would have heard about it before. Interestingly, these same people who learned about this issue only moments ago, instantly become authoritative experts on the subject. I'm told that I don't understand, that whatever I actually said is something stupid that I never even implied, and that it's nothing to worry about. Maybe that is why so few people are discussing the subject. 

 The issue is simply this: the number of licensed amateurs in the U.S. is dropping rapidly. It's been dropping for two years now, at an unprecedented rate. If anything, it's become worse over time.

 From the end of 2020 to the end of 2021, the national number of licensed hams increased by 7242. The previous year (2019), those figures increased by 7830. I could go on, but suffice to say that we haven't had an actual decrease in the number of licensed amateurs in the U.S. since 2007 (a mere drop of 226 licenses) -- until recently. 

 There was a drop in total licenses between the end of 2000 and the end of 2007, which added up to a loss of 26.4k licensed amateurs over that seven year period. The total national license numbers started their familiar climb since then. Note, of course, that the Morse code testing requirement for an amateur license was dropped in 2007.

 We ended 2022 with 10.4k fewer licensed hams than we started the year with. 

 We ended 2023 with 14.6k fewer licensed hams than we started the year with. 

 So, we've come pretty close to matching the scale of the disaster of the 2000-2007 period already. Yet, only about 4.6k of those lost during that period were holders of Technician Class licenses. This was because Novices moved to Technician Class in droves.

 The vast majority of those losses over the past two years have occurred in the Technician Class. In 2023, the number of Techs dropped by 13.1k licenses. In 2022, the number of Techs dropped by 8.7k licenses. In other words, the problem is getting worse over time. Which is weird, because I was told over a year ago that this was just a short-term thing. 

 Now, some of you are nodding knowingly at the idiot writing this, and saying "They upgraded, dummy!". Sure, some did. First, let's look at the drop of total licenses. If multiple thousands of Techs upgraded to General, the total number of licensed hams wouldn't have dropped, would it? But, more to the point, we can see from the figures that the General Class only increased by a mere 418 licenses in 2023 -- not by 13,000 as you glibly supposed. And, just to dispense with your next desperate claim, the number of Extra Class licenses only increased by 684 licenses in 2023. So... that figure of 13.1k Techs represents licensed hams that are no longer licensed, and not Technicians who upgraded. 

 Unlike the drop from 2000-2007, we are not seeing big shifts between license Classes this time.

 In 2022, the number of General Class licenses only went up by 327. And the number of hams holding an Extra Class license only went up by 684. But we lost 8.7k Techs that year. Are you starting to see the problem? 

Well, allow me to lay it out: The hobby is losing massive numbers of Techs, and only a relative few are upgrading. Whatever number of new Techs we are gaining is being greatly offset by the number of Techs allowing their licenses to expire. 

 The previous slide of this scale (2000-2007) resulted in a drastic, fundamental change to the amateur radio hobby: the elimination of Morse code exams. And we're pretty close to that scale after only two years. But there's really not much to give away this time, without turning into GMRS. And HF privileges aren't nearly as attractive to Technicians as many suppose them to be.

 In Minnesota, we closed out 2023 with 1229 fewer licensed hams than we started the year with. In keeping with the national pattern, 778 of that number were Technicians -- or 63% of the loss. Unlike the national pattern, we also lost 107 General Class hams over the last year. And the number of Extra Class licenses in Minnesota declined by 44 over the past year. In fact, I've been tracking the MN license numbers since 2018. We've been remarkably stable at 12.5k or even 12.6k into 2021. Suddenly, though, we lost 1200+ licensed hams in the state. Nothing to worry about though, right? It's just a short-term thing, eh? Then why have we lost 120 since April? It took a year for us to gain that many in 2021, and we only gained 16 in 2020. Nothing about this is "normal churn".

 In fact, practically all states have seen declines in the total number of licensed amateurs. Just in the last seven months, Florida has lost 356, Ohio lost 178, and Texas lost 269. But that's nothing compared to California, which lost 2054. And that trend is accelerating. For example, since the end of 2019, Texas has lost about 350 licensed amateurs, but 269 of that loss happened over the past seven months. 

 The usual glib explanations I've heard from the instant experts are inane and predictable. It's just a short-term thing. It's COVID. It's the FCC's screwy database. Some even welcome this development, saying the hobby is too crowded already. Mostly, though, they just pretend that I said something else, and attack that.

 Why? 

 The usual glib answers from the Old Guard and senior hams are predictable. It's too easy to get a license, so nobody wants to be a ham anymore. It's all of those Dumb Techs who are too lazy to upgrade to General, and who never discover the joys of HF phone operation. It's those damned Baofengs, or EchoLink, or DMR. It's the lack of FCC enforcement. It's the new fees to renew your license. 

 The weird thing is that GMRS licenses are increasing steadily. It's the same fee as an amateur license. There's no upgrade possible. There's no exam. The privileges are dramatically less compelling than an amateur Technician license. But the number of GMRS licenses are going up, while the numbers of Techs (and hams in general) are going down. So, it doesn't seem that the problem is a declining interest in two-way radio, or fees. 

 Personally, I think the major cause of the decline in amateur licenses is simple: death. I've been saying for years that a substantial portion of licensed amateurs actually reside in the cemetery, but their 10-year license term hasn't expired yet. Those big increases in Technician Class licenses we saw from 2010 to 2014 were largely retirees, and they've moved on to their final rest. For years, I've been pointing out that we lose 6 Techs for every ten we gain. It's just that we've seen such a big increase in new hams from 2010 to 2021, that these declines have been obscured. Now that the surge of new entrants has substantially slowed, we can see the wreckage left by an elderly demographic. And, as the ARRL's marketing study showed, roughly half of new amateur licensees never even get on the air. How likely are these people to renew their licenses after ten years? 

 One of the data points I look to to support my death premise is the decline in obsolete license Classes: Novice and Advanced. Nobody has got a new Novice or Advanced license in over 20 years. But the number of Advanced licenses drops by about 1000 each year (now over 2000). Why wouldn't they be renewed? If they upgraded to Extra, why didn't the number of Extra Class licenses go up accordingly? I would say that it's hard to renew a license after you die. 

 What's YOUR solution? 

 Ah, yes. It's the last desperate gasp from the amateur group-think. You aren't supposed to talk about problems unless you have a solution, and you can't have a solution because people smarter than you would have already come up with it. Reasonable people who haven't had their cognitive processes short-circuited by group-think can discuss these things without leaning so heavily on knee-jerk reactions. It is what is. If someone tells you that it will snow tomorrow, you don't demand a 'solution' from them. The simple fact is that the number of licensed hams is declining at a scale we haven't seen before. When the numbers were increasing, we constantly heard from the Old Guard that what they were doing "worked". But, when we continued doing the same thing, and those numbers dropped, they go on the attack. 

 It's easy to say, "Recruit new hams". We've been doing that, but obviously we aren't retaining them. Simply dismissing thousands upon thousands of previous recruits as "dumb" or "lazy" doesn't address the issue -- especially when we've pointed to their entry into the hobby as proof that our Old Guard has all the answers. If people spend ten years in the hobby, but aren't finding a compelling reason to remain, that points to an issue with the hobby itself. 

 More and more, the hobby has (to the non-ham public, at least) become defined by EmComm and HF operation. It may be time to reconsider that marketing strategy. Or you can pretend that what I'm "really saying" is that HF operation and EmComm are "bad" and "stupid", and anyone engaging in those aspects of the hobby is a Bad Guy. Putting stupid words into someone's mouth in order to create an imaginary 'problem' that you can 'solve' with your glib 'wisdom', isn't actually helping anyone. Nor is it advancing the discussion. But it really is all that most senior hams have to offer. 

 If we really are going to make HF operation what this hobby is all about, how sure are we that such an aspect remains as compelling today as it did in the 1970's? Global communications are now cheap, easy, and open to everyone. Even so, shortwave radio has been abandoned by nearly all countries. It kind of seems that the technological context that the hobby existed in during the 1970's has changed. In a sense, we are offering people who own cars the chance to make horse-shoes. Except that we are currently telling each other that people who own cars are crazy about horse-shoes, but they're just a bit too dim and lazy to make their own. For decades, we've dangled the sparkly, shiny object of HF operation in front of the eyes of new hams. Suppose that most don't find that as attractive as we tell each other it is? What happens to "incentive licensing" when the incentive fails?

 If we continue to define the hobby in terms of "When All Else Fails", what are newly-licensed hams supposed to do when "All Else" isn't "failing'? We're rapidly approaching a time when smart-phones will be able to text anywhere in the world using satellites. More and more, it seems that the EmComm side of the hobby is turning people into vultures actively hoping for misery to strike, the longer the better, in order to prove the value of the hobby. And that scenario gets more unrealistic as time goes on. 

 And, in a hobby that sees itself as cutting-edge and progressive, it seems more and more like the purpose is to prevent change -- or at least, ignore it. FT8 was introduced seven years ago, after all. And try to remember how much resistance there was to that new-fangled technology among HF phone operators back then. It's the same mindset as those who predicted doom for the hobby when code exam requirements were lifted. Running through the amateur group-think is an abiding fear of change, a belief that change is always bad and always threatening to the hobby. And there is always some shadowy menace, some unwashed barbarians at the gate, who want to take it all away from us. 

 Adopting, saluting, and promoting this corrosive group-think is pretty much a requirement to participate in the hobby. While many senior hams may have become oblivious to it, the way this group-think plays out for new entrants is glaring.

 There may actually be solutions to turn this situation around. But we've gone so far off the deep end with our group-think that no one will be able to discuss the matter until the loss has become irreversible.

 To me, the roots of the problem are social, cultural, and one of marketing. But anything I have to say along those lines will be ignored, and instead substituted with something I didn't say. Again, it's how we 'discuss' things in this hobby. The technological context that amateur radio exists in has changed radically since the 1970's. It will continue to change. Your ability to distort those statements simply doesn't change that truth. Your ability to point to anomalies, and extrapolate ridiculous conclusions from them, changes nothing in the real world. It does, however, manage to deprive hams of the conversations needed to address the current problem.