Weekly Viz 2019-01-14

How many people earned the Federal minimum wage or less in each State?

About Makeover Monday

MakeoverMonday is a social data project: “Each week we post a link to a chart, and its data, and then you rework the chart. Maybe you retell the story more effectively, or find a new story in the data. We’re curious to see the different approaches you all take. Whether it’s a simple bar chart or an elaborate infographic, we encourage everyone of all skills to partake. Together we can have broader conversations about and with data.”

Starting from Jan 08, 2018, I decided to put aside one hour on Monday weekly to create some visualization and find some insights from the data.

The datasets are published each week at: MakeoverMonday Datasets.

Makeover Monday 20190114

This week’s data is on the percentage of people who earn at or below the Federal Minimum Wage in each state in the US. You can find the original viz and article here. It’s surprising to know the Federal Minimum Way is on $7.25 per hour, which has not changed since 2007… Something we need to notice about this dataset is that each state has its own minimum wage requirement, which could be higher than the US. Thus comparing the percentage of residents at or below federal minimum across the states might not tell the true story.

My Visualization

Due to the concern I mentioned above, I decided to show the general trend instead, and allow the proability of highlight a certain state and display the summary stats for that state.

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Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

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Insights

• Across the state, we see the % of people below or under Federal Minmum Wage peaked around 2010, and have recently returned back to the level around 2002;
• The highest proportion of people below or under Federal Minmum Wage is seen in Georgia in 2011, and in Missisipi and Texas in 2010, all around 10%;
• The state with most increase of people below or under Federal Minmum Wage in 2017 comparing to 2002 is Tennessee, in which we see 38% increase;
• While in Monata, we see the most improvement – the percentage dropped 69% from 2.9% in 2002 to 0.9% in 2017.

Follow this link to find more weekly vizzes :)