Wales will finish the first year of Wayne Pivac's reign as the ninth-ranked team in the world.
It's a drop of five places from this time last year when Warren Gatland's side reached the semi-finals of the World Cup.
Fortunately for Wales, the seedings for next week's Rugby World Cup 2023 draw have been decided on what the rankings were at the start of 2020, rather than the end, as would normally be the case.
That decision, which means Wales are top seeds because they were ranked fourth at the time, was taken to be fair to all teams in the ranking system, some of who have not been able to play so far this year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Under normal circumstances, Wales would be facing a World Cup 'group of death' as they would be placed among the third seeds, as they were for the 2105 tournament. That situation saw them matched with England and Australia in the Pool stages.
World champions South Africa remain the number one team in the world despite not playing a single match since lifting the trophy last November.
England are second after their Six Nations and Autumn Nations Cup triumphs, while Tri Nations champions New Zealand are third.
France, Ireland, Australia, Scotland and Argentina are all now ranked head of Wales, who avoided dropping to their lowest ever position of tenth with victory over Italy on Saturday.
The World Rugby rankings on December 7
1. South Africa (94.20 points)
2. England (89.49)
3. New Zealand (88.95)
4. France (85.30)
5. Ireland (84.65)
6. Australia (83.08)
7. Scotland (80.82)
8. Argentina (80.31)
9. Wales (79.36)
10. Japan (79.29)
The full detailed rankings can be found here.
