As usual, you break up the totals into small chunks with emotional impact ("captains") that you can point at and say are increasing, and neglect the big picture.

I pointed out the hiring fallacy. If you gain enough aircraft to require 200 pilots, but you only hire 100, then you are in fact shrinking by 100 from a "status quo" where no one moves.

Busy now, but I will post the total # of pilots from the lists at various points in time over the last few years. They are clearly shrinking. You will then go, "Oh hey, but we were overmanned by FIRST OFFICERS, of course we had to shrink THEM, it's just good business", as if you didn't just say EXACTLY what I did but with a positive spin on it.