How do you check the number of users?
You have to log into all 6 pools and see the statistics for the last block payout and see how many pages in 10s of users are there.
That's what I did when the 50mh/s limit per account was enforced and I saw on one pool the number of users jump gradually from 26-27 pages to 33-34 pages, meaning that we had on a single pool a 25% increase in users as soon as that limit was enforced.
So I guess if you take out statistics from the 6 pools which consist of current pool hashrate - current user count, then we might have some more info on this strange behavior.
I'm logged in to two - DRONE and PROBE, both showed the same behaviour - hash rate and difficulty up but miners down

Given the limit is working @ 50MH's, and it appears to be, how can more hash be generated from less workers?
The only way to explain this is that the average hashrate per miner is going up, i.e. more miners are getting closer to the limit. Why is this happening - I don't really now, I guess people are pointing more of their hashing power to their workers.