home > interesting topics > statistics

Jehovah's Witness Statistics

This article contains the most detailed statistical analysis of Jehovah's Witnesses available on the internet, graphically presenting Watchtower's annual publisher reports for each year since 1960, including publishers, baptisms, memorial figures and congregations. These figures are used to extrapolate additional information, such as conversion rates and the number disfellowshipped. Whilst a relatively minor religion, Jehovah's Witnesses number in the millions, and are worthy of attention.

To view the Watchtower data and JWFacts tables used to generate the following information, see Watchtower Publisher and Memorial Reports and Data. See also:

• Australian Publisher Statistics
• British Publisher Statistics
• United States Publisher Statistics

Since 1995, the rate at which Jehovah's Witnesses were growing started to decline, coinciding with the change of the Generation Doctrine, and internet access to information regarding the religion and its teachings. The most dramatic change has been the number of hours of preaching required to gain a new member. In 2022, over 10,000 hours of preaching was required for a single baptism, and due to the number of Jehovah's Witnesses leaving or dying, it took 40,000 hours of preaching for the number of Jehovah's Witnesses to increase by just 1 person.

An extensive study into American religious groups identified Jehovah's Witnesses as having the highest turnover of any religion.¹ This is supported by Watchtower's own figures, as presented here.

br> download 26mb mp3

In the 10 years from 2011 to 2020, there were 2,721,457 baptisms, yet the increase in average publishers was only 1,199,255. This shows 1,522,202 stopped publishing. Even accounting for the average death rate, over 1 million Witnesses left in a 10 year period.

Despite growth coming to a virtual standstill, Watchtower continues to spin the figures as an indication of Jehovah's blessing.

"We are pleased to share encouraging highlights from the 2022 service year report of Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide. Over the past service year, "Jehovah has done great things for us, and we are overjoyed"! (Ps. 126:3) For example, 1,501,797,703 hours were dedicated to the harvest work. This is a 5.5 percent increase from the previous service year. An average of 8,514,983 publishers shared in this vital work each month, which is an increase of 0.4 percent. An average of 1,465,202 expended themselves as regular pioneers each month - an 8.5 percent increase. Additionally, we are happy to report that 145,552 were baptized - an average of over 2,750 each week!" Announcement February 9 2023

A 0.4% increase is less than the population growth rate. 1.5 billion hours of preaching is half a billion less hours than 5 years ago. The number baptised is the lowest since 1982. The only significant increase was in regular pioneers, but that is an inflated figure, since the number of hours required to be considered a regular pioneer is half of what it once was. (Regular pioneers were required to report 100 hours each month in the 1970's. This was reduced to 83 hours, then 70 hours, and from 1st March 2023 will only be 50 hours. Auxiliary pioneers have had their hour requirement reduced from 60 down to 30, and in some months only 15 hours.)

Since 2010, the majority of growth has come from developing countries in Africa and South America. In 2016, 70% of the increase in average publishers came from just 7 countries, Angola 10k, Brazil 21k, Ecuador 3k, Ghana 4k, Mexico 11k, Rep. of Congo 34k and Nigeria 3k. On the other hand, developed countries with the highest level of wealth, education and internet access to information regarding Watchtower have little to no growth. In 2016, many of these countries reported less publishers than previous year peaks, including Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada and Japan.

There are occasional spikes in publisher growth, such as in 2002, following the 2001 World Trade Centre disaster, and in 2009 as response to the global financial crisis (GFC). The graphs on this page show that the increase in publishers came from inactive Witnesses starting to preach again. This indicates that in times of uncertainty inactive Witnesses are reinvigorated to start preaching again, potentially out of fear Armageddon is imminent. Surprisingly, despite fear of Covid-19 being used as a sign of the Last Days, average publishers dropped in 2020 for the first time in over 40 years.

The following figures highlight trends, which are more reliable than the specific numbers for a number of reasons. For instance, Watchtower has regularly changed its reporting criteria over the years, such as reducing the minimum time to be counted a publisher to just 15 minutes per month for some individuals and reducing the hours required to be considered a pioneer. There is also questions over the accuracy of the figures being reported by individuals. Furthermore, anomalies exist in how figures are reported. For instance, "hours preaching required per baptism" does not identify baptisms of newly interested people from the territory, compared to children raised as Jehovah's Witnesses. Publishers includes those not yet baptised,[1] and it cannot be determined how many that become publishers go on to be baptised.

To view the Watchtower data and JWFacts tables used to generate the following information, see Watchtower Publisher and Memorial Reports and Data.

Average publishers

To be considered one of Jehovah's Witnesses requires being a "publisher." This word is somewhat confusing, as it refers to a follower that engages in preaching and submitting a report each month of the number of hours preaching they participated in. The number of publishers, and hence Jehovah's Witnesses, includes baptized and unbaptized followers. The FAQ article How Many of Jehovah's Witnesses Are There Worldwide? explains;

"How do you count the number of Jehovah's Witnesses?

We count as Jehovah's Witnesses only those who are actively preaching the good news of God's Kingdom each month. (Matthew 24:14) This includes those who have been baptized as Witnesses as well as those who, though not yet baptized, qualify to share in the preaching work." (https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/how-many-jw/ 8 Jan 2022)

Average Publisher figures are the most accurate way of determining the number of Jehovahs's Witnesses.

Peak publishers is an inaccurate figure due to how Watchtower collects this data. For example, if a publisher forgets to report in January and lodges their January and February reports at the end of February, the January report is not adjusted. Both reports are added to February, creating an artificial spike.

"“Peak publishers” is the highest number reporting for any one month of the service year and may include late reports that were not added to the preceding month’s report. In this way some publishers may be counted twice. However, the peak figure does not include the number of publishers who actually shared in the ministry but forgot to report. This emphasises the importance of each publisher reporting promptly each month. “Average publishers” is the typical number of different ones reporting time in the ministry each month." Watchtower 2011 Aug 15 p.22

Using average publishers helps even out this error.

The total number of average publishers has generally increased each year.

However, the percentage growth rate has been in decline since 1995.

In the 5 years prior to 1975, average publishers increased up to 13% per year. During the 1980s and early 1990s, growth continued at over 5% per year. This fell to 1.32% in 2019, hardly more than the world's population growth rate of around 1.05%. Since a portion of new publishers are teenagers raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, 2 billion hours of preaching each year only leads to enough new converts to replace the children that leave.

The following graph highlights the consequence of the slowing growth rate of Jehovah's Witnesses. Publishers were growing at an average rate of 5.63% per annum for the 15 years between 1981 and 1995. Growth dropped to an average of just 2.09% between 1996 to 2021. Had growth remained at 5.63%, it could be predicted that the 4,950,344 Witnesses in 1995 would have exceeded 20 million in 2021, instead of 8 million - a difference of 12 million less Jehovah's Witnesses. A combination of the growing irrelevance of 1914 and access to information on the Internet reduced growth from 15 million to just 3 million.

Notes:

• Publisher growth tends to spike in times of uncertainty, such as after the events of September 11, 2001, earthquakes or global recession, but these spikes are short lived.
• Watchtower artificially increased numbers in 2002³ by allowing publishers to report when engaging in just 15-minutes preaching in one month.

Long Term Peak Figures

Watchtower reports on both average and peak publisher figures. Whilst average figures are more accurate, as dicussed elsewhere, peak figures are still insightful. The highest percentage growth rates for peak publishers were in the 1970's and highest numerical growth in the early 1990's. Long term figures show a dramatic decrease in percentage growth rates when comparing the early 1970's with the 21st century.

Baptisms

The number of baptisms reached a high of over 375,000 in 1997. Since then there has been a rapid fall of 30% to an average of 250,000 per year. When comparing baptisms to the increase in average publishers there is over one hundred thousand people unaccounted for each year, examined in more detail later.

Baptisms are less than half what they were in the 1990s, when compared as a percentage to average publishers.

Strikingly, the number of baptisms gravitates around double publisher growth, meaning that for every two people baptised one publisher leaves.

Memorial Attendance & Partakers

Growth in memorial attendance aligns closely with the growth in publishers. The total number of attendees represents about 2.6 times the number of average publishers. Interestingly, the difference was 2.0 in the 1960's, but steadily increased until it stabilised around 2.6 since the 1980's. Many of these attendees may be considered fence sitters, hedging their bets that if Armageddon is real and does occur they will jump back on board just in time to be saved.

There is one figure Jehovah's Witnesses expected to decrease each year - the number of partakers, since the 144,000 was thought to have all been chosen by 1935. However, partakers started to increase in 2006.

For detailed information on memorial partakers see 1935 and Memorial Partakers

Congregations

Number of Congregations provides better comparison to other Christian groups, as the figure for "average publishers" does not count youth and interested ones that do not report hours of preaching. The average number of publishers per congregation has increased from 52 in 1970 to 68 since 2010.

64,501 Kingdom Halls catered to 115,416 congregations in 2014, an average of 1.78 congregations per hall. (See 2016 Calendar and 2014 Annual Report.)

Direct Extrapolations

Watchtower's figures shown above can be used to calculate the number of hours preaching required for each additional Jehovah's Witness.

Hours Preaching per Baptism

In 1969 there was one baptism for every 1,983 hours of preaching. During the 1980s it had risen to 3,000 hours. In the 15 years from 1997 to 2011, the number of hours preaching required per baptism increased from 3000 to 6000, an increase of 100%.

Hours Preaching per Additional Publisher

More significant is the number of hours required for an additional publisher. Due to the large increase in Witnesses leaving the religion, the number of hours preaching required for an additional publisher doubled from 4,000 in the early 1990's to over 8,000 in 2000. The difference between 4000 hours in 1995 and 12,000 in 2014 is a change of 300% in just 20 years.

Number of Bible Studies that get Baptised - Conversion Rate

Of grave concern to the Governing Body must be the rapidly falling conversion rate - the percentage of Bible studies that get baptised.

It is remarkable to visualise just how tiny the number is of bible studies who get baptised. Whilst roughly one Bible study is conducted every month for each publisher, only a minute amount of these ever progress to baptism. Despite the number of studies doubling to 9 million in the 20 years from 1995 to 2014, the number of baptisms has dropped from its' 1997 peak of 375,963 to less than 300,000 each year. Considering that a large percent of those baptised are children of Jehovah's Witnesses, this figure is even more alarming and shows how ineffective Jehovah's Witnesses preaching work is.

As a percentage, the Annual Number Baptised compared to Average Monthly Studies fell from a high of 1 in 5 (22%) prior to 1975 to around 8% during the 1980's and 1990's. This then steadily declined to less than 1 in 33 (3%) since 2014. (Please note that this is a comparative rate, not an exact one, as it is based on "average monthly Bible studies", and some Bible Studies may extend for years, whilst others for only months.) If we half this percentage to remove the children of Jehovah's Witnesses, then only around 1 in every 100 people that accept a Bible Studies progress to getting baptised.

Growth compared to Publishers

This graph highlights the low growth rate proportional to Average Publishers.

Ratio of Jehovah's Witnesses to Global Population

There are around 1 Jehovah's Witnesses for every thousand people globally. The following graph shows how rapid growth was for a period of time, but since the mid-1990s, it has settled around 1000, showing Jehovah's Witnesses are simply growing at the same rate as the population.

In much of the world, the ratio of Jehovah's Witnesses is actually falling. For in stance, in 1995 there was 1 Jehovah's Witness for every 294 people, but by 2023 it had fallen to 1 in 379.

Indirect Extrapolations

The following graphs are approximations that combine Watchtower data with average figures on death rates, numbers disfellowshipped and reinstatements, uncovering interesting information and trends.

Number Leaving

The increase in publishers is only about half the number baptised, resulting in Jehovah's Witnesses have the highest turnover of any mainstream religion.

"Jehovah's Witnesses are most "mobile." Accounting for less than 1 percent of American adults, one-third of their members leave the group, and two-fifths join from another religion." (Leadership Currents Shaping Our World: Switched after Birth July 1, 2003 ctlibrary.com as displayed on 24th January 2007)

The comment in Leadership magazine is supported by the following analysis of Watchtower publisher reports, which compares the number baptised with the increase in average publishers.

Subtracting the increase in average publishers from the number baptised each year can be used to determine the number of Jehovah's Witnesses that stop publishing each year.

Factoring those that have died makes the figures more meaningful, and this method of determining the number that leave is in line with how Watchtower also calculates this figure, as shown in a 1967 article.

"In the last five years 323,986 new Kingdom publishers symbolized their dedication to Jehovah God by water baptism. Yet, during that period, there was an increase, on an average, of only 174,088 ministers. What happened to the other 149,898? When one subtracts the approximately 1 percent who normally die each year, it still leaves about 100,000 persons who have ceased to preach in just the past five years." Watchtower 1967 Mar 1 p.150

I have taken into account an average death rate of around 0.85% per year, based on 5 yearly average information from cia.gov.au this century. After removing the number of Jehovah's Witnesses that die each year, it can be seen that tens of thousands more leave annually for other reasons.

After accounting for the death rate, the number that becomes inactive each year is still generally in excess of 20% of the number baptised. Comparing the years from 1980 to 1995 with the years since 1995 highlights the significant increase in the number of people leaving since the early 1995.

(Note on negative figures - The years 1983/4/5 and 2009 have negative figures for those becoming inactive, indicating more people reactivated than stopped publishing. Whilst tens of thousands become inactive each year, others start preaching again after a period of inactivity. In the early 1980's, some who went inactive after the failure of the 1975 predictions came back to the religion. In 2009, it seems economic uncertainty and end of the world fears brought a number of inactive back.)

Missing Over a Ten Year Period

Adding together the numbers above, for the 10 year period between 2010 and 2019, the increase in publishers was 1,321,609 less than the number baptised. After accounting for a death rate of 0.85% each year, the total that left in one decade was 650,737.

Inactive and Faders

A publisher that does not report preaching for six months is termed inactive.

"An inactive publisher is someone who has not reported any activity in the preaching and disciple-making work for six months or more." Watchtower Study Ed. 2020 Jun p.18

Watchtower admits that "thousands of his servants become inactive each year." (w2020 jun p.18)

In these graphs, the number of inactive ones includes:

• people disfellowshipped/disassociated
• people that have died
• people that have voluntarily stop preaching

Those that no longer believe it is the truth and stop preaching without getting disfellowshipped, usually so as to be able to keep contact with family members, are referred to by former Jehovah's Witnesses as faders. These graphs show this category has seen significant increase since 1995.

Inactive ones are the most volatile group, as a sub-set of those that fade or are disfellowshipped are uncertain of their beliefs, and reactivate in times of crisis, out of fear of the imminence of Armageddon. This reactivation, seen through a decrease in the rate leaving, manifest itself following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, and at the height of the CFC (Global Financial Crisis) in 2008. In the year 2014, the 100th anniversary of when Watchtower claims Jesus took heavenly rulership, there were less leavers; maybe some doubters superstitiously remained in expectation the anniversary may herald in Armageddon. Once the crises fades from memory, these weak individuals soon became inactive again. The number leaving rose to over 50,000 again in 2015, and no doubt will continue to rise over coming years.

The following graphs attempt to identify the number that voluntarily stop preaching. The negative numbers in some years indicate that a net rejuvenation of publishers, as some that stopped publishing in previous years start to report again.

This figure has been calculated in the following way;

Baptisms
• less Growth in publishers
• less 1.00% disfellowshipped
• add 0.33% reinstated
• less death rate = Unaccounted/Inactive

Breakdown of Baptisms, Increases and the number that Leave

1997 was the peak of a long period of year on year growth in baptisms. The following graph shows the number of baptisms started to drop from that time, whilst the number of people that stop preaching began to increase. Up until 1995, the number that stopped publishing (the yellow section) was a small fraction in comparison to the increase in publishers (blue column). Since then, the number of people becoming inactive has grown to the point where on occasion it exceeded the increase in publishers, such as in 1999.

For the sake of accuracy, this graph takes into account the death rate as discussed earlier.

Breakdown by Continent

Comparing the number of Jehovah's Witnesses by continent highlights how dependant ones chance of belonging to the religion is on place of birth. The Americas have by far the highest saturation of Witnesses, with one witness for every 240 people in 2016. This is followed by Oceania and Europe. These are all traditionally Christian Continents and it becomes immediately apparent that the success of Jehovah’s Witnesses is dependant on the success of Christianity before it.

Africa has about half the rate of Witnesses of Europe, which follows on from Africa being fairly evenly split between Muslims and Christians. Christian African countries have high Witness density levels, similar to Latin America.

In the Hindu/Muslim area of Asia/Middle East there is a tiny fraction of Jehovah’s Witnesses, signified by the tall green column. Despite a population of over 4 billion people in Asia/Middle East, in excess of half the world population, the number of publishers increased by only 10,273 in 2016.

Click here for a summary of the figures used, as taken from the 2011 and 2012 Yearbooks of Jehovah's Witnesses.

5 Year Figures

The following graphs compare 5 year time-frames, showing that over half a million Jehovah's Witnesses leave every five years, more than half the number baptised.

A 5 year period was used as a way to even out the spikes that occur during years of uncertainty. For instance, there were increases in publishers after the World Trade Centre disaster in Sep 11 2001, and after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, as some inactive Jehovah's Witnesses are reinvigorated by Watchtower using tragedy as an indication Armageddon is immediately imminent.

Curiously, 2020 saw a decrease in Publisher numbers, despite Covid-19 creating huge expectation as a sign of the end. This could be because some publishers were uncomfortable preaching by letter and phone during lockdown. Or maybe some that were "physically in, mentally out" took the opportunity to fade. It will be interesting to monitor the numbers once Jehovah's Witnesses can freely congregate and preach again.

Are Baptisms Internal Births or Converts?

It is not possible to calculate the proportion of Jehovah's Witness baptisms that are from children raised in the religion, compared to new converts. On the one hand, the highest increases of Jehovah's Witnesses is in poor countries where birthrates are higher than the global average, but this is offset by Watchtower encouragement not to have children in the last days, and that a high rate of children raised as Jehovah's Witnesses do not get baptised.

As a thought experiment, let's assume the birthrate of Jehovah's Witnesses is the same as the global average. There were 4,950,344 Jehovah's Witnesses in 1995, during which time the global average birth rate was 22.4/1000. The estimated number of Witness children born in 1995 is therefore 110,887. In 2011, when that group of children were 15, the average age of baptism, there were 263,161 people baptised. That means Witness children must account for less than half the number of baptisms (110,887/263,161=42%). Conversions from preaching had to account for over half of all baptisms.

Since then it is likely that Witness children have started to make up a higher portion of baptisms. In 2022, there were only 145,552 baptisms. 15 years earlier, in 2007, the global birthrate was 20.475/1000 and there were 6,691,790 Jehovah's Witnesses. Using those figures, there were 137,014 Witness children compared to 145,552 baptisms - 94%.

If children accounted for half of all baptisms in 2011, the effectiveness of preaching is even worse than outlined above. 1.7 billion hours of preaching resulted in around only 130,000 conversions from preaching, or over 13,000 hours preaching per convert. By 2022, with a higher number of Witness children and less baptisms, the number of preaching hours per convert gets ever higher. It is hard to comprehend how any organization could justify such inefficiencies.

For world historical and predicted crude birth rates (number of childbirths per 1,000 people per year) see data.un.org

Number Disfellowshipped

Watchtower comments show that "disfellowshippings worldwide have been approximately 1 percent of publishers." (w92 7/1 p.19), of which only one third get reinstated. Therefore, over 1.3 million Jehovah's Witnesses were disfellowshipped during the 30 year period from 1991 to 2020.

Conclusion

The Watchtower explains that the Last Days have continued for so long because Jehovah desires all to attain to repentance, based on 2 Peter 3:9,15 "Jehovah is not slow concerning his promise, as some people consider slowness, but he is patient with you because he does not desire anyone to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance. ... consider the patience of our Lord as salvation...".

"However, God finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked one. Rather, he delights to see people repent, turn back from their bad ways, and keep living. (Ezekiel 33:11) Consequently, he is exercising patience and is having the good news declared in all the earth so that people may have every opportunity to live." Watchtower 2006 Feb 1 p.18

"Another reason why Jehovah has waited patiently is so that more people can have everlasting life. " Watchtower 2012 Sep 15 p.18

If only active Jehovah's Witnesses will be saved, then 2 Peter 3:9 and Watchtower comments about God's patience do not make sense. On average, the global population increases by 215,000 people each day, but the number of active Jehovah's Witnesses increases by only 320 (2017 daily increase in average publishers). Each day that Armageddon delays requires Jehovah to destroy an extra 215,000 people.

If the new system had arrived in 1975, as once expected, there were around 2 million Jehovah's Witnesses expecting salvation, and a global population of 4 billion in line for destruction. If it were to come in 2018, whilst there are 8 million awaiting salvation, 7 billion will die according to Watchtower doctrine.

It has been stated that Jehovah is speeding up the growth of the Watchtower Society, with predictions that the momentum would continue.

"JEHOVAH is now speeding up the ingathering of sheeplike ones. Surely, then, this is no time for his people to slow down in their Kingdom-preaching and disciple-making work. (Isaiah 60:8, 22; Matthew 24:14; 28:19, 20) Indeed, increased witnessing activity by so many more publishers and pioneers is now stirring up the world field. And the momentum of this joyous ingathering will yet grow. Isaiah 60:11" Watchtower 1988 Jul 15 p.15

"In fact, during 2015, there were 8,220,105 of Jehovah’s servants who preached the good news of the Kingdom around the world! God said about the increase among his people: “I myself, Jehovah, will speed it up in its own time.” So as time goes on, there will be more work for all of us to do." Watchtower 2016 Aug p.15

Statistics show this does not hold true for Jehovah's Witnesses.

A statistic of note is that the average age of Jehovah's Witnesses is increasing. The Pew Report (as of 2 Aug 2018) compares the change in age between 2007 and 2014 in the United States. There has been a significant increase in older age groups, showing that Jehovah's Witnesses are ageing, without being replaced at the same rate by younger converts. With 23% over 65, decline will increase as these older members pass away.

It will take major change in Watchtower teachings and practices to turn this trend of declining growth around. I expect that the number of publishers will stagnate and then begin to slowly fall.

---

Notes on how Statistics Were Derived

The following statistical information has been used in the estimation of some figures above:

Number disfellowshipped annually - 1.00%

This is based on the Watchtower 1992 Jul 1 p.19

"In recent years disfellowshippings worldwide have been approximately 1 percent of publishers."

One percent is a conservative estimate.

"Unfortunately, during the 1986 service year, 37,426 had to be disfellowshipped from the Christian congregation." Watchtower 1987 Sep 15 p.13

"It is to be noted, also, that during the past year, 36,638 individuals had to be disfellowshipped from the Christian congregation." Watchtower 1986 Jan 1 p.13

In 1985 average publishers were 2,865,183, so the 36,638 disfellowshipped in 1985 represented 1.28%, and 37,426 was 1.22% of the 3,063,289 publishers in 1986.

Other Watchtower articles that provide figures for the number disfellowshipped include w60 12/1 p.728; yb79 p.31; w89 12/1 p.17; w91 11/15 p.9.

Number reinstated - 0.33%

I have used an average figure of 1/3 of the number disfellowshipped subsequently being reinstated. This is based on the following comments.

"36,671 persons had to be disfellowshiped for various kinds of serious wrongdoing. Yet, in that same period 14,508 persons were reinstated." Watchtower 1974 Aug 1 p. 466

This equates to 39.6% being reinstated.

"During the service year of 1958-1959 there were 6,552 individuals disfellowshiped by the New World society of Jehovahs witnesses for various reasons ... and there were 1,597 ... Reinstated." Watchtower 1960 Dec 1 p.728

This equates to only 24% reinstated.

Number died

The CIA World Fact Book has been used for calculations that include the global population death rate, with esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2 providing the rate averaged over 5 year periods. Where indicated, the above statistics take into account the number of Witnesses that die each year, so as not to over inflate the numbers leaving.

---

Footnotes:

¹ ““Publishers” includes baptized Witnesses of Jehovah as well as unbaptized ones who qualify to be Kingdom preachers.” Watchtower 2011 Aug 15 p.22

The 2020 Congregation Analysis Report uses the term "Active publishers," which includes unbaptised and irregular publishers - those that reported at least once over a 6 month period.
Image source: s-10-E 8/20

² "Jehovah's Witnesses are most "mobile." Accounting for less than 1 percent of American adults, one-third of their members leave the group, and two-fifths join from another religion." Currents Shaping Our World: Switched after Birth (ctlibrary.com 1 Jul 2003)

"An even more extreme example of what might be called "masked churn" is the relatively tiny Jehovah's Witnesses, with a turnover rate of about two-thirds. That means that two-thirds of the people who told Pew they were raised Jehovah's Witnesses no longer are - yet the group attracts roughly the same number of converts." America's Unfaithful Faithful David Van Biema (news.yahoo.com 25 Feb 2008)

"Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition. Only 37% of all those who say they were raised as Jehovah's Witnesses still identify themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses." (religions.pewforum.org 8 Mar 2008)

This continued to be the case in 2014, as shown in the graph from Religious Switching and Intermarriage.

³ "He makes sure that those who are very limited because of advanced age or because of being shut-ins and those who are temporarily limited because of serious illness or injury are aware of the provision that allows them to report field service time in 15-minute increments if they are not able to report a complete hour during one month." Kingdom Ministry 2002 Oct p.8

This provision was extended to all Jehovah's Witnesses during Covid-19 in the Direction Related to COVID-19 Pandemic for Bodies of Elders, December 9, 2020.)

Originally published 2006, latest update Jan 2024.

   Paul Grundy  2005 - 2024