We are now officially in campaign season for the Lawrence City Commission. There are several things you can count on: There will be free cookies at the North Lawrence Improvement Association candidate forum; all candidate forums would be improved with the addition of free cookies; and candidates will talk about how adding jobs to the community is critical.

Indeed, adding jobs to the community is important, but I’m not sure there are many people in the community who could actually quote you any statistics on how we’re doing in that regard. To be fair, it is difficult because job numbers are a bit like the presidential Twitter account — ever in motion and subject to interpretation.

The most common job number you see for Lawrence/Douglas County is the unemployment rate. As part of its calculation, it includes a jobs number. But that number is not particularly meaningful if you are trying to hold city commissioners’ feet to the fire on promises to bring more jobs to town. The jobs numbers used in unemployment figures don’t measure how many jobs exist in Douglas County. Instead, they measure how many people in Douglas County have a job. That means the local unemployment rate could drop but we haven’t added any jobs at all. Instead, Kansas City has added jobs, and residents of Douglas County are driving over to K.C. to work at them.

But fear not. There are bureaucrats who measure how many jobs exist in Douglas County. The problem is they are measured monthly, and one month’s worth of data isn’t very useful.

The latest such numbers were released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics a couple of days ago, and they are for April. They show Lawrence/Douglas County nonfarm businesses had an estimated 56,200 people on their payrolls — an increase of 200 people from April 2016. That’s an increase of 0.4 percent. That was a better performance than the state as a whole, which saw job numbers decline by about 7,200 people or 0.5 percent. Compared with other regional metro areas, Lawrence didn’t fare as well. Here’s a look:

• Iowa City: up 2.8 percent

• Kansas City: up 2.2 percent

• Boulder, Colo.: up 2 percent

• Ames, Iowa: up 1.5 percent

• Topeka: up 1.4 percent

• Lawton, Okla.: up 1.1 percent

• Manhattan: up 0.9 percent

• Columbia, Mo.: up 0.6 percent

• St. Joseph, Mo.: up 0.5 percent

• Lawrence: up 0.4 percent

• Wichita: down 0.2 percent

• Grand Junction, Colo.: down 0.8 percent

• Joplin, Mo.: down 1.1 percent

But again, that is just one month. In Douglas County, the increases may be entirely attributable to the increase in forklift operators who help my family stack the candy we buy at post-Easter sales. Once the candy is gone, so are the jobs. In other words, there can be a lot of seasonal variations.

So, what I’ve done below is look at each month’s data going back to January 2017. I looked at the percentage of increase or decline for the number of jobs in each of the communities. That allowed me to create an average. It gives us an idea of whether we’ve been constantly adding or losing jobs compared with the same period a year ago.

The good news from the numbers is that Lawrence has added jobs every month in 2017. The bad news is that Lawrence is adding jobs at less than half the rate of either Kansas City or Topeka. Here’s a look:

• Iowa City: 2017 Average: up 3 percent

• Kansas City: 2017 Average: up 2.6 percent

• Topeka: 2017 Average: up 2.3 percent

• Boulder: 2017 Average: up 2.3 percent

• Ames: 2017 Average: up 1.6 percent

• Lawrence: 2017 Average: up 1.1 percent

• Manhattan: 2017 Average: up 1 percent

• Columbia: 2017 Average: up 1 percent

• St. Joseph: 2017 Average: up 0.9 percent

• Lawton: 2017 Average: up 0.6 percent

• Wichita: 2017 Average: down 0.4 percent

• Grand Junction: 2017 Average: down 0.5 percent

• Joplin: 2017 Average: down 1.1 percent

Now that I’ve done the initial leg work on this, I’ll try to keep it updated monthly — or, I may get sidetracked by the cookies.