I'm glad you'll stick around a while longer. Welcome back.
The new member number encompasses all registrations. Almost all of those are spambots, however. November has been especially bad for spambots (like the early days, in fact); in the last couple of weeks, I've rejected about 300+ a day. I'd guess we get 10-20 real new members a month, usually. (And as best I can tell, DerekLoove is a legit registration, although the moniker is classically spammy.) If spam registrations continue at this pace for much longer, I'll be needing additional moderator help just to keep them in check.
At this point, I pretty much accept anyone registering with a university email address, or with a regular address (e.g. gmail) combined with what looks like a real moniker (unless it involves something clearly academic-y like 'prof', then they must also verify their registration). As far as I can tell, a plurality of spam accounts are using fake gmail addresses these days.