I would think that another characteristic of a profession is its interest, work and commitment to developing new members to ensure the profession's continuity. This column is written to discuss scenarios that could develop due to diminishing enrollment in the profession; that is, if you choose to use attainment of registration as a land surveyor as a measure of the number of practitioners. I haven't researched every state in the union, but from talking with people on registration boards, at institutions and at state surveying societies, it appears that it is nearly universal that the profession is losing more members through attrition (retirement, disability, death, change of career, etc.) than it is gaining through new registrants.

As we know, the activity of surveying is a vital contributor to the economy of this country. Thus, the decreasing number of surveyors could have an adverse impact on the economy. This is especially true if you include all types of surveying, such as engineering, topographic and planimetric mapping, construction stakeout, construction quality control, construction as-builts and so on-even though most of these activities don't appear on most states' lists of activities that only a registered land surveyor can do. But even property boundary surveying of one type or another is essential to most land development activity, and quite often is a compulsory step in the development process. It is this essential step in the land development process that will continue to require surveyors to accomplish it.