With December’s number of robocalls now in the books, a YouMail report has tallied a total of 52.8 billion robocalls for all of 2024. The report said that robocall volume has hovered between about 50 billion and 55 billion calls each year over the past four years.
“The good news is that the total robocall volume in 2024 is over 4% lower than 2023, despite the significant late-year increase in election-oriented robocalls,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici this week. “However, it’s disappointing that robocall volume as a whole continues to exceed 50 billion calls per year, which is still nearly 200 calls for every adult in the country.”
Examining types of robocalls showed that telemarketing calls surged by almost 26% in 2024. However, other types decreased: there was a 22% drop in scam calls, an 11% drop in payment reminders, and a 17% drop in notifications.
Telemarketing made up the largest category of robocalls in 2024, accounting for 37% of all robocalls, which was 9% higher than in 2023.
Looking at December 2024 report numbers specifically, U.S. consumers received slightly fewer than 4.4 billion robocalls for the month, a 7.8% decrease from November 2024. This breaks down to an average of 140.6 million robocalls per day and 1,627 robocalls per second. This was 15.6% higher compared with the same month in 2023.
All robocall categories dropped in December 2024. There were 18% fewer scam calls and 11% fewer notification calls. The number of payment reminders were down 6% and telemarketing calls down close to 4%. Scam calls and telemarketing calls in December comprised about 52% of all robocalls.
In the month before the presidential election, the YouMail Robocall Index reported an increase of nearly 10% in robocalls. The report noted that consumers received almost 4.9 billion robocalls in October 2024.
