US Pandemic Unemployment Rate
The feeling of uncertainty is one most people don’t appreciate. The state of limbo and its noncommittal nature leave much to be desired. The beauty of history is that we can look upon past events with the privilege of hindsight. Take yourself back to 4 years ago to April of 2020; the Covid-19 pandemic is revealing itself as something more serious than originally thought. The one word I would use to describe this time was uncertainty. Questions such as “how long will this last?” and ‘how serious is this?” flooded everyone’s mind. For example, lets take a look at the unemployment rate for each US state during the time:
Source: Federal Reserve Economic Data, USARAMS, April 1 to April 30.
As you can see some states fared better than others. At the top of the chart are states such as Nevada, Michigan, and Hawaii juxtaposed with the relatively low rates of unemployment found in Wyoming and Nebraska. The data speaks to the fact that the states that struggled the most did not have very diversified economies – Nevada and gambling, Michigan and car manufacturing, Hawaii and tourism.
A snapshot into the past like this truly put things into perspective. Eventually employment would come back down to historically average numbers, but only after years of adjusting to a new normal. In April 2020, nobody knew what was next for them, it makes you wonder what snapshot taken of today will we be looking back on with hindsight.
Data Analysis Process
Link can be found here to the GitHub repository: https://github.com/agoldston/USAunemployment.git
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