it is the number of "requests" that are sent to the other computer which include the subscription, address status and transactions. as the other computer (the Electrum node) answers the first number grows indicating number of replies.
shown here:
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/bf223470ce607a762700f144a6a0f4cb0205cf54/electrum/gui/kivy/main_window.py#L883-L885
fetched from here:
https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/2b1a150c52cf2a3c9df9046bc5268d3eadf3b577/electrum/synchronizer.py#L129-L130