Mapping economic indicators in United States

USA

By Andrea Ontaneda
main economic indicators, state, economy, employment, poverty, gdp

This project analyses main economic and fiscal trends at the state level from 2009 to 2019.

About this project: Timely and sound economic data are of critical importance to policymakers, the business community, consumers, and investors to analyse how the economy is performing and guide decision-making. For this, in modern work in economics, maps also play an important role as data sources. Thus, the main goal of this project was to map key economic indicators by state and help a wide array of people to track their economy. This map specifically shows data since 2009 so the user can compare how the economy, and each state in particular recovered after the 2009 deep recession when real GDP fell, unemployment increased, and median wages remained stagnant.

Methodology: An interactive map was created to present five of the most important indicators used to measure and analyse economic activity. First, I downloaded data from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. I cleaned and filtered the data to show only information from 2009-2019 and to create each metric in Excel. I then uploaded that data to Carto so they could be geocoded, styled and eventually end up on my website.

Map users can click on any indicator and filter information by state and year. Data for each selected state automatically appears on the sidebar. This information is useful for users who want to compare indicators between states or interpret indicators for each particular state over time. In addition, the webpage provides definitions for each indicator as well as findings from 2019 Economic Releases and Tables and links to data and sources.

Map description: The economy of the United States is highly developed and mixed. It is the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP and net wealth and the second largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). In 2019, real GDP increased 2.3 percent compared with an increase of 2.9 percent in 2018 and the unemployment rate returned to 3.5 percent in November, a 50-year low. Moreover, the Bureau of Labour Statistics also reported the median wage was $38,640 in 2019 thus, median wages have increased 0.7 percent since 2001, after adjusting for inflation. Besides, according to Census data, the official poverty rate fell from 12.3 percent to 11.8 percent.