Dataset of the Day: Mapping the State of the Union

Maps by Emily Sciarillo and William Benjamin

Last week President Obama presented the Congress and the American people with his examination of the state of the union after his first year in office. He outlined his achievements as well as some of his failures in the past year and presented his plans for the future. We thought we would make maps highlighting some of his major points in the speech. Some maps we made with datasets that are regularly updated in Finder! such as unemployment. For others we created new datasets and uploaded them into the database.

Recognizing that the economy is the one issue foremost in American’s minds, he focused much of his speech on the subject. Job creation and small business growth were major factors in his plan for improving the economy, citing the Stimulus Package as the engine for both.

The first map shows how the unemployment has changed in the past year. The green counties show areas where unemployment rates decreased since last November and the purple counties show areas with increasing unemployment.

It is no surprise that most areas of the US have seen their unemployment rates continue to increase but to put that into perspective, it is helpful look at the same scale for the 12 months change during the last year of the Bush administration (the next map). During Bush’s last year the unemployment also rose in much of the country however it appears that during Obama’s first year, more counties increased dramatically (by 4% or more) and less counties improved their unemployment rates at all. To address unemployment the president spoke of the Jobs Bill and a major component of that bill is to fund clean energy projects. The following map shows current wind energy projects in each state. If DC is going to promote more environmental projects around the US, than it might be interesting to see how green DC itself is. The next map shows commercial buildings and plants in downtown DC that are Energy Star approved. Another way that the President suggested he will boost job growth is by doubling our exports in the next 5 years and mentioned specifically trade with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The map below shows the US Trade Balance for all countries for 2009. As expected we have a high trade deficit with China. It is interesting to see with what countries in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East we have a deficit or a surplus. This next map shows the total trade balance of each country in the world. The US clearly has the highest trade deficit. As part of the recovery act, Obama highlighted a high speed rail plan. These projects around the country should provide for at least some job growth. The next map shows where these projects will be on top of the unemployment rates. Although not the main topic in his address, health care did get a lengthy mention. The president reconfirmed his commitment to improving health care in this country, particularly for the uninsured and underinsured. The next map shows uninsured Americans by state. Check out these dataset and others in Finder!