For now, the figures look neat. Around 79,000 places are still available on the humanitarian evacuation programme for around 85,000 currently in the camps.
What they do not include, however, are the 150,000 refugees currently billeted with host families in Macedonia. Nor do they include the many thousands presumed to be sitting it out across the border in Kosovo, where according to a new US government report, at least 600,000 displaced people "are now struggling to survive".
Far from diminishing, the pace of expulsions has continued to build, averaging more than 10,000 a day into Albania and Montenegro, meaning that it may be a matter of weeks before the Serbs achieve their goal and most of those remaining will be out or on their way out.
No one knows how many are dammed up behind the Blace border but the feeling in Skopje is of the calm before the storm. A second camp is being built at Blace with a 9,000 capacity.
Yesterday, border police allowed 47 undocumented refugees through at the Blace crossing - by far the highest number in the eight days since it was effectively closed. It may signify a relaxation on the part of the government here and it will certainly be encouraging news for others left behind, who monitor the BBC and Macedonian television for news of crossings and read the signs. "If we don't come back, you'll know we've crossed," said those who went ahead.
Those crossing through mountain areas report that the Serbs are continuing to mine unofficial crossings.
One woman claimed that she had been shot at by Macedonian police while trying to cross two weeks ago.
They had their first night of peace last night in the not-so-luxurious surroundings of Stenkovec 1, where yesterday some classy paving was being laid in the baked earth outside the shabby building housing the police station and three shops.
With refugees stubbornly refusing to be coaxed towards Albania - a dirt-poor place of anarchy, criminals and rapists, they say, where the camps are as blisteringly hot and horrible as anywhere else - this may be an intimation of administrators digging in for the long haul.
Despite an open invitation from the Albanian government to all-comers, only 166 have taken it up.
Flights to Slovenia and Turkey have also been poorly subscribed to. Some observers believe that the UNHCR's central premise that all such moves should be strictly "voluntary" is taken too literally and that not enough is being done to educate or inform.
Meanwhile, planners must try to second-guess the politicians and decide whether to "winterise" the camps - in these parts temperatures can reach 40C in the summer and plummet to 20C in the winter - or assemble materials for the rebuilding of Kosovo. The UNHCR says it has begun to do both.
Should they build latrine blocks or exchange the tents for pre-fabs? Seek to heat the (currently cold) water? Establish centralised cooking points, fuel and heating? And how will the Macedonians respond once they see a sense of permanence developing around these eyesores, peopled with angry young men, the poor and the dispossessed?
But the possibility of a return to Kosovo has also to be considered - another imponderable as no one knows what remains standing there. UNHCR logistics teams are storing timber supplies on the basis of the Bosnian experience where returnees were able to make at least one room habitable quickly. There is nothing simple about this war. And there is no doubt that some big players are in for the long haul. US civilians working on the construction of the US army base here have told The Irish Times that they have signed five-year contracts.