What do you think, how many AdSense publishers are there ? I was analizing cheqe numbers and i think that aproximetly 40 000 publishers are receiving cheeques. How many are taking payment to their bank accounts ? hard to say. This is an explanation why AdSense support is automatic - it's impossible to answer so many questions.
The number may be quite higher and the amount of emails and questions they maybe getting a day would be hard to say.
I would imagine substantially higher numbers, it would probably grow faster each day too. For all the people that are banned too i guess theres a constant supply of brand new publishers to replace them and keeps the number of publishers rising.