kd,
Thanks for posting. I agree the figures don't make any sense.
With the caveat that the figures aren't truly accurate, I did notice the number of PERM applications received has increased from 17,700 in the mid Jan report to 24,720 in the early Feb report - a movement of 7k. Total applications processed only rose by 4.8k.
Essentially, none of those were adjudicated in Q1 (well, 705 to be precise) due to the 3-4 month processing time.