Covid-19 Pandemic

Low-Income Job Loss by County, US

Percentage of Covid-19 Job Loss by County

Data obtained through the Urban Institute Data Catalog (click here).
Map created by Michael A. Thomas (github: math264), Fall 2020.

Map authored by: Michael A. Thomas

This map displays the percentage of jobs lost in the US by county during Covid-19. The map is also interactive, so feel free to use its features: change the zoom level to see up close or states like Alaska that are not intranational - reference the legend to understand the data breakdown - click on any county to see the name and percent job loss. This map is mobile-friendly too, so you can enjoy it on the go! Click the INFORMATION button in the top right to open an info footer on mobile devices.

Metadata/Behind the Scenes

The map's data represents two seperate files collected from the Urban Institue Data Catalog: a .geoJSON and a .csv. Utilizing the spatial geometry of the geoJSON and job loss rate in the csv, a new geoJSON was exported with a complete tabular join of the needed data. The job loss rate was suitable for a chloropleth map since the rate is already a normalized byproduct of jobs lost divided by the total number of jobs in each county. The geoJSON data was accessed using JQuery's AJAX in Leaflet's library. From there, the flow of execution sequenced through .getJSON(), drawMap(), getColor(), and drawLegend() methods. Adding a secondary state boundary geoJSON layer better defined states and their counties.