But their ranks could swell if the world economy weakens.

This is four times the number the agency estimated in 1980, and it projects that the ranks will swell to 220,000 by 2008.

Twenty years later, the union's ranks had swelled to 3,000, and by 1985 it stood at 7,000.

Together, there were well over 100 lawyers whose ranks swelled with former prosecutors.

By the time of the 1973 fire, their ranks had swelled to over 52 million records.

Today, the ranks of the poor are again swelling.

The organization, started in 1985, has seen its ranks swell from 30 members to more than 550 nationwide.

Their ranks had swelled from half a dozen to over forty.

By mid-1978, the ranks of the Sandinistas had swelled from 50 the year before to 1,200.

As they have in every economic expansion, the ranks of temporary workers are swelling, but something is different this time.