During my Christmas travels, I took along the new edition of The Public Relations Writer’s Handbook (JosseyBass, 349 pages, $40.00) as airplane reading.

On the whole, I thought it was a helpful guidebook, but there was a sentence in the chapter on speechwriting that made me wonder if the cabin had suddenly lost air pressure. “In the United States,” say the authors, “several thousand corporate speech writers earn high on the pay scale for public relations employees.”

Huh? Several thousand corporate speechwriters?

I wonder where the authors got that figure.

I don’t know if there are any authoritative figures on the number of fulltime corporate speechwriters in the U.S., but my own experience tells me that there are not even a few hundred of them –- and the number appears to be dwindling even as you read this.

What makes me think so?

For one thing, I’ve been a featured speaker at the last five national speechwriter conferences in Washington, D.C. According to my friend David Murray, who organizes these conferences, attendance tops out at 250. Of those who attend, only about a quarter are regular speechwriters. Another quarter are sometime speechwriters looking for inspiration. And just about half are generalists looking to add speechwriting to their communications toolbox.

I grant you that measuring attendance at these conferences is not a scientific way of estimating the number of speechwriters in the U.S. But have a look at the Internet job boards and see how few job searches are being conducted for fulltime corporate speechwriters these days. Surely if there were thousands of such positions, the ordinary process of attrition would mean that there would have to be dozens –- even scores –- of speechwriter job searches advertised every month.

If anyone out there has hard figures on the number of fulltime corporate speechwriters in the U.S. –- or perhaps some better estimates than mine –- I’d be grateful if you’d send them along.

By the way, for information about the next speechwriter conference, which will be held over February 13-15 in Washington, D.C., see the Ragan web site at www.ragan.com. I can’t guarantee that there will be thousands of speechwriters on hand, but I think you’ll find the event to be both professionally and personally rewarding. I’ll be speaking again at this one and would love to meet you.