Seems everyone is over-booked and unwilling to put the time into choirs and rehearsals. I don't know what the solution is. Singing is just not that important to folks any more.

I often wonder why a parish with a membership of, say, 3000 families seems content with having only a handful of people in the choir. Or, why parishioners consider this group, with each of its members singing into a microphone, to be a "choir."

My choir, to my delight, is very dedicated and they sing well. They're also few in number, and I'm wondering if that's normal in a Catholic parish.

To answer your question directly, yes it is fairly normal for the choir to be smaller relative to the congregation than it ought to be. This is of course not always the case, but it certainly seems to be typical. Less typical is that they sound good, so be thankful for that!

Sometimes even less than 7%

But are you paying half of those folks or more just to sing, and do you have any volunteers? Is the choir actually a praying ensemble? I depend on paid folks, one of whom recruited externally is Catholic, but you must at least be open to recruiting volunteers, not just anyone, of course…at least in this country, one because budgets don’t expand infinitely, two because it’s a necessity if you are to have goodwill with parishioners.

Mine discovered that we were still paying people, which leads to some confusion and disappointment, and they’re happy when I explain that we pay a core of singers and recruit volunteers around them; my handbook explains that the paid folks especially sing the chant (the Ordinary) to support the congregation which does sing well, but unevenly (obviously Mass IV is less well known than XI!).

Anyway if I had more volunteers we could have choral music without the paid folks in the summer (which would give the choir a longer break from Sundays and therefore in all likelihood rehearsals — coming back in August for the feast of the Assumption was tight!) and after Christmas, at our weeknight Masses…we might be able to do TTBB with two paid voices instead of four, but I wish we had more reliable volunteers so that we could have at least two per part. Safety in numbers!

30 people in the music program between the men’s schola and choir would be great for me! Not everyone sings every week, and the core people could also take some time off themselves at this point if we had that many people to draw on and develop.

Vespers is strong, but I just lost my cantor who sangs the psalms with me and don’t have a regular replacement yet. The odd verses are a bit weak, and I’d like more of the men’s schola to sing with me.

Right now we're averaging 6 singers for 150 in the pews= 4%, borderline OK. And it's going to get better soon. Fortunately, people seem thrilled with whatever we sing. We do some 4-part music with organ, but I'd rather not unless we have at least 2 on S & T (the alto can sing alone, though she's getting help soon, and the bass is me.) Fr. Rossini's rule was a minimum average of 5 per voice part; you weren't supposed to sing in 4 parts in Pittsburgh unless you had a 20 voice choir. This used to make me laugh, but I'm coming around. 2 on the "buddy system" only means that in deep water, one singer will pull the other one under. 3 starts to give a real section sound. But to get 3 consistently, you do need 4-5 to a part.

@Jeffrey Quick
Re: the 20-voice choir

This sort of matches my thinking, though I'd be happy with 3 per part if I were a choir director (I'm one of the organists).

I usually play for a vigil Mass with roughly 450 people or so attending, sometimes with a cantor, and sometimes with a group of 3-6 singers who sing in harmony. These folks sing beautifully, and I enjoy accompanying them. But I think of a group like this as a small ensemble rather than a choir.