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US Unemployment

Replicating a newspaper chart is always a lot of fun, and it was to be no different with this one. The Sep 8, 2011 article in Guardian includes a  choropleth map to display US unemployment percentage by state. While data is available for every month between November '08 - July '11, the Guardian drop-down box only allows us to pick four months out of 33!

Choropleth maps are thematic maps in which areas are shaded or patterned in which shows the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed on the map, such as population density or per-capita income, and post-Excel 2002, is mighty hard to create in Excel. I've saved a Jorge Camoes tutorial for years on how to make one, and now, in my last week of recuperation, I've finally had the time and the patience to attempt and complete one.

The finished map and table looks as below.




Moving the scroll bar changes the colours for the states.  The table to the right categorizes unemployment percentage into  4 groups of Critical, Dangerous, Threatening and Consistent- and lists the names of the states under each group.
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