That's easy, go to
WWW.FAA.GOV and see table 14 in civil airman statistics. Compare all years, you can see that they reported 317,000 for 2015 and 260,000 for 2016. Is that not a decrease of 57,000? If you really are a working
mechanic, you know that the FAA recently required us to apply for a new plastic certificate for security of our SSN and so they could track who is active. A significant drop would be expected if only working mechanics are suddenly being counted. Im sure others have noticed the big empty hangars around Dallas. I counted 19 empty bays that were full a decade ago. There have always been more pro pilots than mechanics at any airline, even when all MX was performed in house. No one becomes a mechanic for fun anymore than anyone would get an ATP rating just for the hell of it. Compare those numbers, yep, over twice as many A&Ps than ATPs. The fact that wages are still flat for A&Ps indicate a condition of oversupply. Johnburke, you are a busy man. You seem to have more knowledge and experience than most guys could accumulate in three lifetimes.