LabourStart in Numbers as of 1 April 2025
What follows is a brief summary of highlights followed by the usual long list of numbers.
SUMMARY:
Our new podcast service is picking up and we have passed the 7000 downloads mark. Older episodes continue to see new downloads, suggesting that the word is still getting out about the series.
Our first podcast to break the 500 downloads mark dropped in March, an interview with the President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees regarding his union’s reaction to Trump’s threat to ‘annex’ Canada.
We continue to see changes in the mailing lists as the problems that resulted from several mailing service provider changes are corrected but growth has returned. Spanish has displaced German as our third-largest list.
Our two Bluesky accounts are managed in much different ways. Sporadic efforts were made the increase the followers of the global accounts which now stands at 15,301, up from 13.2k. The Canadian English-language account went from 297 to 353.
XTwitter feeds continue to decline. Most or all of that can be attributed to our followers abandoning the platform for Bluesky and perhaps Mastodon.
Our other numbers remain fairly stable.
THE NUMBERS:
The first number next to each item is the current total as of today; the second number is the total as of the last report. Where one number is provided it means that there has been no change since our last report.
Lists or accounts that have shrunk are in italics. Lists or accounts which experienced growth are in bold.
STORIES POSTED TO OUR NEWS SITE IN THE LAST MONTH:
3807 (123 per day)-2927 (105 per day)
MAILING LISTS:
The lists are being rebuilt after some technical hiccups so the numbers can be expected to fluctuate considerably over the next month or two.
The top 10:
English: 85126-84862
French: 7089-7075
Spanish: 5566-5553
German: 5522-5511
Turkish: 4503-4460
Korean: 3197
Italian: 2828-2824
Russian: 2677
Norwegian: 2003-1996
Romanian: 1730
Dutch: 1437
The others:
Arabic: 770-763
Belarusian: 299-288
Bulgarian: 17
Chinese: 965-964
Creole: 11
Czech: 58
Danish: 79
Esperanto: 187
Farsi: 164
Finnish: 439
Georgian: 176
Greek: 54
Hebrew: 270
Hindi: 80
Hungarian: 172
Indonesian: 385
Japanese: 382
Lithuanian: 62
Malaysian: 20
Polish: 964
Portuguese: 1274
Punjabi: 2
Serbian: 97
Sinhalese: 1
Slovak: 15
Swedish: 909
Tagalog: 183
Thai: 142
Ukrainian: 493
Vietnamese: 21
Internal:
Executive: 12
Interns and Past Interns: 15
LabourStart Correspondents: 611
LabourStart Translators: 104
Africa Caucus: 63
Media Contacts: 69
Donors: 885
FLICKR:
Members: 838
Photos: 10351-10337
TELEGRAM:
LabourStart channel: 133-135
FACEBOOK PAGES/GROUPS:
No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.
LabourStart.org page likes: 14k, details unavailable
Global Labour News and Information: 9.2k
LabourStart UK likes: 2.1k, details unavailable
LabourStart Francophone: 620 (last post February 2021)
LabourStart-de: 489
LabourStart Brasil: 552
LabourStart Turkce: 2k, details unavailable
LabourStart TV likes: 465
LabourStart TV follows: 455
LabourStart Vostok: 119
LabourStart Italia: 68
LabourStart Esperanto: 18
LabourStart Canada-English: 191
LabourStart Nepal: 7 (last post April 2017)
LabourStart Israel: CLOSED (last post 2018)
LINKEDIN:
No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers.
Group: 2640-2634
Page: 322-317
PODCASTS:
We passed the 5000 downloads mark in January. By labour podcast standards this is considered more than reasonable given the effort required.
LabourStart is a member of the US-based Labor Radio / Podcast Network.
Rather than list each podcast and the numbers of times they have been downloaded we will report the three (3) podcasts that have been downloaded the most times to date.
- 533 downloads: Interview with Mark Hancock, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees re. the union’s recently-adopted “Montreal Declaration” which was drafted in response to US President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada.
- 424-423 downloads: Interview with Carlos Ching-Hung Wang, the president of the China Steel Express Union (Taiwan).
- 321-320 downloads: Interview with Sally McManus, Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)
BLUESKY:
As an experiment we created a global news in English feed mid-November. The account is growing far more quickly than any other of our social media accounts ever did. A Canadian English-language feed was added in late December.
Our Mastodon experience, as with most people’s, was not great as the initial excitement wore off quite quickly. That does not appear to be happening with Bluesky.
No concerted effort was made to grow either account last month.
Global English-language: 16.5k-15301
Canada-English-language: 378-353
X (TWITTER as-was):
No concerted effort was made in the past month to increase our numbers for these accounts. If we wish to maintain our footprint we will have to start doing so again or the erosion of our numbers will continue. Whether that is possible is another question given the current flight of users from the platform.
We experienced decline in all accounts except the Australian, which grew slightly. Prior to the exodus to Bluesky all would have usually experienced slow growth without any effort on our part. This is almost certainly the result of trade unionists closing their Twitter accounts and moving to other platforms (such as Bluesky or Mastodon).
Global English: 36303-36431
Canada English: 20202-20949
Global Portuguese: 9925-9956
Global Spanish: 10247-10265
Australia: 9422-9702
USA: 4683-4708
Canada French: 3101-3107
Russian: 50
Hebrew: 50 (last tweet 02-2021)
Italian: 508 (last tweet 11-2021)
Swedish: 329-330 (last tweet 2016)
Indonesia: 341 (last tweet 2015)
French: 224 (last tweet 2018)
German: 120 (last tweet 2018)
Japanese: 21 (last tweet 2012)
Dutch: 12 (last tweet April 2012)
Arabic: 7 (last tweet May 2012)
South Asia (English): 28 Placeholder and not yet active.
