Their statistics and numbers are a very hard thing to go by. By letting some count 15 minutes a month alone could have grown their numbers by the hundred of thousands. I have a feeling more changes like that are coming to artifically increase statistics.
We may see pioneer hours lowered to have more pioneers. The 30 hour aux already inflated their hours preached and placements. Changing studies to door step studies and only needing to be 5 minutes increased the number of studies. I bet by old standards the amount of studies each year would be very very low.
The funny thing about numbers is you can make them look as good as you want or as bad as you want. It's all about how you spin them and what things you change to make the numbers look better. Expect more changes as things start to slow down.