This morning, the Church reported its annual statistical report as of December 31st, 2024.
- Membership: 17,509,781 (increase of 254,387 from 2023; a 1.47% annual increase)
- Congregations: 31,676 (increase of 186 from 2023; a 0.59% annual increase)
- Stakes: 3,608 (increase of 43 from 2023; a 1.21% annual increase)
- Districts: 494 (increase of 5 from 2023; a 5.41% annual decrease)
- Missions: 450 (increase of 36 from 2023; a 8.70% annual increase)
- Convert Baptisms: 308,682 (increase of 56,919 from 2023; a 22.6% annual increase)
- Increase of Children on Record: 91,617 (decrease of 1,977 from 2023; a 2.11% annual decrease)
- Full-time Teaching Missionaries: 74,127 (increase of 6,256 from 2023; a 9.22% annual increase)
- Senior Service Missionaries: 31,120 (increase of 3,319 from 2023; an 11.9% annual increase)
- Young Service Missionaries: 4,192 (increase of 308 from 2023; a 7.93% annual increase)
Key Takeaways from the 2024 Statistical Report
1. Convert Baptisms Surge to Highest Levels Since 1997
The Church in 2024 baptized more converts than in any year since 1997—an impressive milestone, especially given the sustained emphasis on meaningful pre-baptism preparation. The increase of nearly 57,000 more convert baptisms compared to 2023 occurred without any single world area being identified as the primary driver, suggesting widespread global momentum.
Despite a modest increase of 6,256 full-time proselytizing missionaries, the average number of baptisms per missionary rose from 3.71 in 2023 to 4.16 in 2024—the highest figure since 2012 (4.62 per missionary). For historical perspective, the modern-era peak was 8.03 baptisms per missionary in 1989.
2. Highest Number of Proselytizing Missionaries (Excluding the “Double Cohort” Years)
With 74,127 full-time missionaries, the Church achieved its highest missionary force ever—outside the anomalous surge from the 2013–2014 age-change “double cohort.” The 9.22% increase marks significant success in mobilizing young adults for missionary service.
3. Most New Missions Since 2013
In 2024, 36 new missions were organized—the second-largest annual increase in modern history, trailing only the 58 missions added in 2013. The 8.7% increase in missions closely mirrors the 9.22% increase in missionary numbers, showing strategic infrastructure expansion to support the rising missionary force.
4. Net Increase in Districts for the First Time Since 2008
A notable turnaround occurred in 2024 with a net gain of five districts—the first such increase in 16 years. The Church organized 28 new districts, the most since 2016. This growth likely reflects expanding outreach in developing areas, where branches are forming and new communities are being opened to missionary work.
5. Highest-Ever Number of Member Record Removals
The Church added 308,682 convert baptisms and 91,617 children of record in 2024, totaling 400,299 new members. Yet total membership only rose by 254,387. This implies at least 145,912 records were removed—due to death, resignation, or loss of membership (formerly known as excommunication).
This figure surpasses the previous high in 2018 (140,868) and suggests intensified record updating or a rise in voluntary resignations. Attrition was 0.86% of the 2023 membership base—comparable to the 0.87% attrition rate in 2018. A more detailed country-by-country breakdown, when available, will help determine where this attrition is most concentrated—likely in the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil, where most members reside.
6. Persistently Low Children of Record Numbers
Children of record remain alarmingly low, continuing a multi-decade trend. The 2024 figure (91,617) is far below the 124,000 recorded in 1982. Adjusted for Church size, that means children of record made up 2.5% of Church membership in 1982 but only 0.53% in 2024—an 80% drop.
This decline reflects both falling birth rates among Latter-day Saints (especially in the U.S.) and the Church's limited success in fostering multi-generational families in newer international areas. In most countries, even where national fertility rates remain high, the Church struggles to retain converts and raise second-generation members.
7. Stakes and Congregations Growing at Half the Rate of Membership
Stakes and congregations increased in 2024, but at about half the rate of total membership growth. This consistent pattern, present for two decades, signals ongoing challenges with member retention and congregation sustainability. While not worsening, the trend continues to show that many new members—particularly converts—are not being integrated into their respective congregations over the long term to warrant the creation of larger numbers of wards and branches.
35 comments:
For anyone who is interested, I have compiled the information from Statistical Reports going back to 1999 to evaluate trends and gather data on overall church growth: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N02NoHQrlTujaH4oky0i-97MSXi7afZ9lPM6NYUMSQg/edit?usp=sharing
There is more evidence for people aging off than there is for members removing records. The cohort of members 70-100 years old is shrinking. Two sets of grandparents in different areas talk of attending funerals on a monthly or twice monthly basis. One empty nester FHE group of 30 years is left with only a fraction living. 3 widows and the grandparents, where it was previously 8 couples.
This is the way life goes. Life, then death. I think you can find more success finding stats on deaths and compare to previous membership numbers to track the cohort of members in each generation
While it will naturally increase over time, it wouldn't cause the giant one year leap we got in the last year. To go from 92k (or even the previous 5 years average of 99k) to 147k is a big jump. Like written by Matt, it is either from cleaning up records or from more people leaving, and it's hard to know which.
I always like looking towards 2030 to see where the church will be on its bicentennial anniversary. If we continue the 250k annual increase in membership, we will likely pass 19 million members in 2030.
I'm sorry, but the fact that it took 27 years(!) to reach the previous convert baptism high is not that much of a flex considering how much the world's population has grown since then.
So, I do think it's most likely an update in record keeping rather than an increase of people having their records removed. Because when you map a population such as the global church the mortality rate per year should be between 90,000 to 134,000. Assuming members of the church are not living a standard deviation longer than their nonmember counterparts within their home countries.
We have good data because of the BH Roberts foundation survey that show only about 1/3 of those who no longer identify as members choose to have their records be removed or Excommunicated. Now this data only applies to the American church but because of genetic similarity theory we would assume that it might be slightly elevated outside of the United States but not beyond the standard deviation period. With who no longer identify as members who are actually on the rolls is only 33% and some preliminary studies I've seen show that about 37% of them will return to the church. So realistically we only have about a 20% attrition rate from generation to generation.
And another thing to give pause is the Pope study of phone data collected that 85% of nominal members attend church at least once a year and that is mostly likely an undercount.
Sure, but it's still amazing it did happen. It shows that, contrary to what some would have us believe, faith in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is not on the decline, but still alive and well, even growing in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of new converts.
And from what I've anecdotally seen online and heard from missionaries I know who are serving, this surge doesn't seem to be slowing down. It wouldn't surprise if the numbers for 2025 are very similar, or even somewhat higher.
Yes, I wonder how much sites like Quitmormon.com have had an impact on records removal, making it easier, especially for technology savvy younger people, who are probably more likely to officially remove their names from the Church. My guess it is a combination of somewhat higher deaths than last year, record clean-ups (particularly in Latin America or in the address unknown file) and somewhat higher resignations, at least compared with the last couple years.
An update in church membership seems to be a partial explanation. But I’d also like to understand the extreme shift in women followers in the last 10 years or so per the latest Pew data.
If the reduction only represents what one would expect of a one-year attrition due to deaths, then the church has many past years of accumulated attrition to account for and hasn’t accounted for yet.
The number of missions doesn't really indicate anything, since it's entirely determined at the whim of the church and has no proportional relation to the number of missionaries or converts.
While not a 1:1 indicator, I'd argue that missionaries with 150 missionaries have the potential to do a lot better than missions with 250. For example.... better relationship with mission president (incl. longer interviews/more detailed readings of letters to the mission president/better understanding of your area), more access to APs/office elders/office staff & senior missionaries, better training & supervision, etc. I was in a mission with closer to 250 missionaries for several months and it just seemed like the mission leadership was spread too thin to help us be the best we could be during that time.
I'd be curious to know the breakout of the number of teaching missionaries that are young missionaries vs Sr. missionaries.
I think some of the lower unit creation is from time lag. New units lag a few years behind unit creation.
I also wonder if some of the low numbers of children of record comes from cases where parents and older children are baptized but no o e bothers creating a church recoiled for younger children until they get baptized.
It is interesting they distinguish service missionaries by age but not teaching missionaries. I am not sure of all the reasons here.
Also are the 900 full-time mission leaders (450 mission presidents plus their 450 wives) counted as part of the 84,000 full-time teaching missionaries?
We have had 2 people baptized in the last 3 or so years in my branch who died in the next year or so. In fact this means that some of the attraction could could from a convert having died before the end of the year.
Much of our thinking on these things assumes that most converts are 40 or under and will live fir a few decades more. Many of the converts in my branch, although not be any means all, are 50 sometimes well over 50.
Latter-day Saints on average have a higher life expectancy, bit this is bot going to apply very much to recent converts.
So deaths might well account for most of the attrition.
Children of record added is people getting blessed right? I believe if they turn 9 and are not baptized they then are removed from the records. This happens automatically without any needed action on either their part or the part of anyone else. So it's impact on numbers is different than some other things. Including the fact that some of the baptisms that are counted as convert baptisms are people who were children of record who were not baptized soon enough to not be convert baptisms.
One thing to point out regarding lost members is that the boomer generation is the single largest age cohort alive right now, and they're reaching the point where they're starting to not be alive anymore. My mother-in-law and one of my uncles both died last year, and they're both part of that generation.
I would be very surprised if death wasn't the leading cause of membership removals for any year of the Church's history within the last hundred years.
I think there have been systemic changes in the criteria for baptism designed to boost retention. So while world population may make higher conversion numbers easier, the standards for baptism may make these numbers harder to achieve.
I know many churches have declining nominal membership, especially in western countries. Of course, our definition of nominal membership is generous. But increasing population in the western world has not made growth easy for other churches. As you can tell, I don’t think world population is the most relevant factor in looking at this 27 year high.
There's got to be a better way to state "Member Record Removals", One's records aren't really removed at death as it's used for Temple and Family history, etc. It's just not included with the stats.
With child of record births decreasing, is expected to increase over time. 145,912 is 1/120 of all records and life expectancy is not 120 years. This is because it's only the last couple of decades when the church appeared to possibly fall below the replenishment rate. Also, less actives tend to have their records appear for some time after death, as no one tells their ward clerk that they died.
Other contributions such as removal request and excommunication are probably a small fraction of the 145,912. Unless we have death stats, it's nearly impossible to determine how much actually happens. Excommunication (or equivalent) has appeared to become less common with time. It was much easier to be excommunicated in the early days of the church.
Two points. The issue with 70 years ago having been 1955, and so many people born 1945-1955 and such a success in convert baptisms, heavily driven by people born that age range in the 1960s and 170s, means we not only have more people doing, but a percentage of these are less active. I once was helping someone with her family history about 2 years ago. She was surprised to nt find her uncle in family search. We figured out that over a year after his death he was still on the ward list. I think the bishop may have even been at the funeral, but updating that record had just not been a priority.
So record removal can be irregular due to lags in reporting deaths. In fact some record removal could be the direct result of reactivation. You get someone coming out and realize in the process a family member listed with them had since they last attended died.
Another issue is I believe sometime around 1990 who wascounted as a child of record changed. At one point they carried urbanized children who had been added to the records all the way until their 18th birthday. Now they are dropped ofc the records at age 9. This is a change in record keeping where the vast majority of people effected are not involved in the church much. There were a few regular attendees who had a parent who refused permission for baptism, but most came very little if at all.
Something else just occurred to me. It appears if I am reading what is said above right that there were more people who seem to be removed in 2018 and 2024 than in 2020 or 2021. I say it that way because some unknown number of the convert baptisms is people who were children of record who turn 9 that year and then get baptized, so they are in both the start and end year figures.
Covers dieing the year they are baptized are the opposite, thry are not in either the start or end year number.
What hit me is that we know there were the most excess deaths in 2020, and 2021 also had excess deaths. So it is quite possible that it takes a while to fully account for the excess 2020z2021 deaths.
It should not be a shock that unit creation is only half of membership increase. Membership activity world-wide is probably about 35 percent. Of the total number of new members, only about 35 percent remain active. Unit creation being at 50 percent of membership increase is actually good news.
Craig Shuler has some observations based on my mission in Sao Paulo area 1970 to 1972, Church employment in Costa Rica and Brazil 1980 to 1985. and Church auditor 1979 to 2018 . . .
- There could be a million or more unrecorded deaths of address unknown members. Address unknown members die and no clerk records the death.
- The Church counts people baptized as members even if they never attended again ever or stopped going after a few weeks or months.
- Some cultures are baptized quicker and stop going quicker than other cultures. I speculate this is much more common in big metropolitan areas in Latin America. Think Sao Paulo, Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, and Mexico City.
Latinos may never come to Church again after their missionaries are gone.
- When members change countries, it they don’t seek out the Church in the new country, their membership records can end up in address unknown files in the country they were baptized.
- There could be millions who are properly counted as members, but do not self-identify as members.
- Birth rates and blessings seem low Churchwide because records of inactive members do not have spouses, marriages, children and blessings get updated.
- I guess it is more likely outside the United States that people who do not self-identify as members.
- Blessings of children is low, not just because of low birth rates but also because people who do not self-identify as members do not have their children blessed.
- On a personal note, I have 3 grandchildren who were blessed as babies and never baptized. Normally their records should be cancelled when they turn 18 (Handbook 33.6.2) and should not be counted afterward as members. I don’t know about membership records for 2 grandsons in one family (one 20 and one turned 18 last week). The membership record for the third grandchild, who doesn’t live here, is in my ward and the ward won’t cancel the record.
Here's my 11th hour temple predictions:
- Angeles Philippines
- Tasmania (not sure which city)
- Lomé Togo
- Yamoussoukro or Daloa Cote d'Ivoire
- Bo Sierra Leone
- Lyon France
- Santa Maria and/or Sorocaba Brazil
- Machala Ecuador
- Poza Rica México
- Rigby Idaho
- Spanish Fork Utah
- Flagstaff Arizona
- Atlanta South/#2 Georgia
- Charleston South Carolina or Wilmington North Carolina (somewhere along the coastal Carolinas)
- New Hampshire or Maine
President Oaks and many others have reiterated such this conference with the emphasis on the 10 virgins.
The "time lag" happens every year, though.
Every single year, you can look at the number of added members and say "at 500 new members per new ward, that should be X wards" and it never amounts to anything close to that. You'd be predicting 509 new wards of 500 members each in 2027 if there is a 5-year lag. I think anyone who has looked at the past 30 years of stats could say that isn't how it's worked so far.
Let's suppose a 3-year lag, as you said. Let's take the 2021 increase then and suppose that a few years later, these additions to membership would lead to growth in units in 2024. At 500 members per unit, that's an additional 283 wards that should be created in 2024 (not 186).
As Matt said, "Stakes and congregations increased in 2024, but at about half the rate of total membership growth. This consistent pattern, present for two decades, signals ongoing challenges with member retention and congregation sustainability."
As Adam said, past years have not tracked implied death rates. So if it is about deaths this year, then it is a new thing, and it would also imply that they are still holding onto old deaths from prior years that haven't been tracked.
Did converts die at a higher rate this year than in the past? That's what you would have to assume.
I actually think your second argument makes a lot of sense. I don't think it's age 9 - I think it's age 18. But regardless, we could start seeing a lot of kids who were blessed, not baptized, but eventually fall off the church rolls as they reach the indicated age. I'm not sure it explains the big shift in dropped numbers this year compared to last, but it is likely to become a significant component of future numbers (another being that the number of people on the church lists hitting 110 years of age will start to increase over time eventually - I don't think we're there yet, though).
I also just finished updating my map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=10lauuaMZA5ZyrCXU5DpKk1kbhZKpCExq&usp=sharing
A neighbor of mine who has not attended church since he was a youth. I was his ministering brother and would visit him regularly (More as a neighbor and friend than as a representative of the church but he knew I was "religious". He died a few years ago. It took several months, almost a year for his membership records to be removed. On a mission in Ecuador we were tasked to try and find members on the records to help clean them up. Some addresses were not year or ambiguous. Such as the white brick (or cane/bamboo) house with the donkey in front of it on an unnamed street a neighborhood.
I meant to say some addresses were "not clear or were ambiguous"
RIVERA!!!!!
CAMPO GRANDE!!!!
How do we get the birth rate up? Obviously have more kids but how to encourage more child bearing?
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