2.4 million: The number of unemployed workers who found jobs in September.

That number likely sounds high, even for people who follow the job market relatively closely. The media, and even many economists, tend to focus on the headline jobs numbers, which are much smaller: Employers added 114,000 last month, down from 142,000 in August but up from the 45,000 jobs created in June.

But those are net numbers. Employers didn’t hire just 114,000 workers last month — they hired millions, and fired or laid off millions more. The monthly jobs number is simply the difference between the two. Except in times of great turmoil, that difference is generally little more than rounding error. (Indeed, the margin of error on the monthly payroll figure is around 100,000 jobs.)

Net numbers are useful for getting a quick read on the state of the labor market. But to get a true picture of the economy in all its scale and complexity, you have to look at gross numbers, the millions of people who were hired or fired, who quit or retired, who entered the job market or gave up looking for work.