Americans Hit by Just Under 46 Billion Robocalls in 2020, Says YouMail Robocall Index

Annual Robocall Volumes Declined 22% from 2019 During COVID-19 Pandemic

U.S. robocalls declined under the lockdowns of COVID-19, with an estimated 45.9 billion robocalls nationwide in 2020, marking an almost 22% decrease from the 58.5 billion robocalls recorded in 2019. This total is roughly 4% below the 47.8 billion robocalls received in 2018, yet still over 50% higher than the 30.5 billion robocalls in 2017.

On a monthly basis, February 2020 was the highest volume month of the year, at just over 4.8 billion calls, far below the all-time peak of just under 5.7 billion robocalls in October 2019. When the pandemic hit hard in April 2020, just two months later, we saw the lowest month at just under 2.9 billion robocalls, a massive drop in short order. However, robocalls started increasing again after that, finishing the year by bouncing around the 4 billion calls/month level.

"We've once again had over 100 billion robocalls over the past two years combined," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. "While the pandemic helped reduced robocall volumes materially, we're still at levels that were considered outrageous a few years ago."

Several key learnings from 2020 include:

Even a pandemic cannot make the robocall problem disappear. While robocalls dipped to 2020's lowest levels in April, that was still higher than June 2018, barely two years earlier, and still consisted of between 50%-60% spam and telemarketing calls.

Enforcement actions help, but they are not a silver bullet. Even pre-pandemic, the tide was turning, with robocalls down roughly 15% from their peak in February vs. October. Well-publicized FCC, DOJ, and state Attorneys General actions against Health Insurance robo callers and carriers that supported fraudulent callers do appear to have made a difference in stopping hundreds of millions of robocalls from being made.

Scam Calls Remain at High Levels

Even with a dramatically reduced volume of robocalls in 2020, there were over 20 billion scam calls during the year and another 6 billion telemarketing calls, together totaling just under 60% of all robocalls.

Despite these large numbers, individual consumers had a very different view of the robocall problem depending on the states where they resided.

The Robocall-A-Day Club

Perhaps the best measure of the pain of robocalls is how many each person gets on average. Last year the only locale that got more than one robocall per day was Washington D.C., whose residents got an estimated 423 robocalls per person, which works out to roughly 1.2 per day. Two other states got more than 5 per week: Louisiana at 262, and South Carolina at 260. On the other side of the scale, residents of Alaska got 39 per year, which is significantly less than 1 per week.

The Two Billion Robocall Club

Only five states got more than 2 billion robocalls during the year compared with eight states last year. The number of robocalls a state got was generally tied to the state's population – the larger the population, the more robocalls. The top state, Texas, was the only state to get more than 5 billion robocalls, with California 2nd with roughly 4.5 billion calls; Florida 3rd with 3.75 billion robocalls; Georgia 4th with just under 3 billion robocalls; and New York 5th with just over 2.5 billion calls. All states saw a decline, with the biggest declines of 29% in Louisiana and Mississippi, and the smallest declines of 13% in Alaska, Arizona, South Caroline, and Vermont.          

Source: YouMail media announcement