Number of Entries to the CQWW Contest

I came across these charts recently about the number of entries to the CQ World Wide contest. This is the largest contest during the year with an SSB and CW leg.

First off, here are the number of entries in the SSB contest every year.

Before I saw the chart, I would have assumed that perhaps the number of entries might have been determined by the sunspot cycle and the amount of propagation. While there does seem to be small increases around the time of sunspot maximum, it is remarkably steady.

The big suprise for me and I think for most people is the big jump in numbers from about 2008 on. It has almost doubled in 5 years. Why the jump?

The figures for CW show a similar pattern.

For a mode that supposed to be at deaths door, morse code seems to be doing remarkably well.