Amateur Radio Data

This page presents data about United States amateur radio operators. The data include historical totals and trends, demographics including name and gender, and distributions by state.  The primary source is the FCC license file. 

• Year-end license totals

• Historical license totals at six-month intervals

• License expirations in future years

• First-names of license-holders

• Gender of license-holders

• Geographic distributions of license-holders

• Geographic distributions of recent licensees

-- The Amateur Radio Service

Amateur Radio is a public service that encourages people to learn more about wireless communication via radio, television, computer, satellite, and other experimental activities.  Operators must pass a test and become licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). They operate under regulations published in Part 97 of the U. S. Code of Federal Regulations.  There are five classes of licenses.  Listed from the beginner-level to the most advanced, the classes are; Novice, Technician, General, Advanced, and Amateur Extra.  The service has been part of the American culture since 1915, and is often referred to as "ham" radio.  Practitioners have contributed substantially to public safety, international goodwill, and the growth of advanced technology.  Modern cell-phone technology, for example, was first created by amateur radio operators.  The first video game was created by an amateur radio operator.  For information on how to become a licensed amateur radio operator, visit this link.    

Cell values and totals for the tabulations shown on this site will vary depending on the selection criteria for the table. All tabulations are limited to active operators, which means they have an “A” in the field reserved for active status.  All tabulations are limited to an expiration date that is after the date of the file downloaded for analysis.  The FCC files contain some records that are listed as active but have an expiration date that is prior to the date of the download. Those are excluded.  Tabulations for license class, expiration date, and state of residence are limited to valid entries in the appropriate field.  

In 2019 I re-evaluated the criteria for selecting and tabulating data in the FCC files and arrived at the results shown here.  The current selection criteria are believed to reflect the most accurate count possible of licensees who are active on the date on which the file was downloaded from the FCC site.  Other tabulations with other criteria will undoubtedly arrive at different totals.  These, numbers, however, are believed to be the most accurate possible. 

The tables in this document are best viewed in a laptop or desktop browser. On mobile devices you might not see all columns on the right.     

License Upgrades

The following table shows the change in U. S. amateur radio licenses by license grade between Decembrer 31, 2022 and June 30, 2024.  Read the table as cells that indicate a change from the left-hand label to the column label.  For example, there were 17 licenses change changed from Novice in 2022 to Technician in June 2024.  There were 7  that changed from Novice in 2022 to Extra in June, 2024.  Essentially, this shows the number of upgrades that occurred for each license grade, including only those who had the same call sign after the upgrade.  Some license holders change call signs when the upgrade, and those are not counted here. 

The table shows that most of the upgrades were from the Technician class to the General class.  the second largest group was from the General class to the Extra class. So we have a two-stage growth pattern : Technician -> General -> Extra.

In an August 2016 USPS mailing to 238 licensed operators listed as active on the FCC files, 62 were returned with bad addresses, indicating they were no longer ham operators.  An examination of names suggested most were likely to be deceased.  The 62 are 26.05% of the total list.  If that list can be projected to the entire FCC data file, we can expect that the total number of amateur radio operators may be closer to 558,000. Additional research is necessary on this topic that is essential to the understanding of the present and future of amateur radio.

-- Historical Amateur Radio Licenses

Click here to see a table of historical licenses updated through June, 2024 

The graph shows the historical number of U. S. licensed amateur ratio operators since 1997.    Amateur radio operators have been licensed since the 1930s, and unfortunately there has been no consistent tracking of the number of operators that goes back to that time.  Inquiries to the FCC regarding historical data have been referred to the ARRL.  However, the ARRL does not have data that extends back to the beginning of the service.  Data tracking of the historical number of operators should be a function of the FCC because it is essential to policy development and administration.  

-- Iowa Amateur Radio Data

        Follow this link to amateur radio data for Iowa (Updated for 2023)

-- Expirations by Future Year

Click here to see a table of expirations by future year. (Updated December 30, 2023)

-- State Distributions

Click here to see a table of licenses by state  (Updated December 30, 2023)

-- Sampled Distribution of Active Amateur Radio Stations -- 2015

Percentage of Licenses Beginning with A, K, N, and W

U. S. Amateur Radio Licenses may begin with any of four letters, A, K, N, and W.   The table shown below shows the percentage of licenses beginning with each of those letters. 

This image shows the distribution of active amateur radio operators in July 2015, based on a sample of about 900 addresses.  The sample is used to reveal cluster patterns and avoid an over-dense image.  The Google map is not interactive. 

-- Sampled Distribution of New Ham Radio Addresses -- 2016

This image shows the distribution of newly found addresses when the December, 2016 FCC license file was compared to the December, 2015 file.  The comparison shows where the growth is occurring.  The sample of 800 was used to reveal cluster patterns and avoid an over-dense image.  The Google Earth map is not interactive.

New York Times -- On the Loss of the Morse Code Requirement

     Click here to read a New York Times article on the removal of the Morse Code requirement.

Fee implemented for U. S. Amateur Radio Licenses

On April 19, 2022 a fee of $35 was implemented for all new and renewal amateur radio licenses in the U. S.  See this link for details.

How to Build a Magnetic Loop Antennas

-- Sources

Sources include the following:

http://wireless.fcc.gov/uls/index.htm?job=home

www.ah0a.org

-- Related Sites

• Keith Greiner Site

• Keith Greiner's Excel Statistics Guide

• Calculating Pi with C++

• WWVB Receiver with Arduino

• How to Build a Magnetic Loop Antenna

<<-- Excel Statistics Guide

(c) Keith Greiner 2024

Key Words:

U. S. Amateur Radio Operators

Federal Communications Commission

FCC

Amateur Extra Class

Advanced Class

General Class

Technician Class

Novice Class

History of Amateur Radio Data

Amateur Radio License Data

Amateur Radio Service License Data

Ham Radio Data

Universal Licensing System (ULS)

Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)