Downtown Lawrence is pictured in this aerial photo from December 2017. It is easy to predict that the economic tally for Lawrence in 2020 won’t be pretty. It also is a good bet that the final analysis will show the 2020 downturn was fueled, in part, by tough times in the city’s rental market, as the pandemic caused hundreds — if not thousands — of students to decide they don’t need a local apartment to attend online classes. But a new set of federal numbers suggests both Lawrence and its rental market were suffering before the pandemic even began. New federal statistics that measure the economy of every county in the U.S. show Douglas County’s economy in 2019 shrank, and the real estate industry was a major reason why.