barjacks commented 8 years ago

US Dependency on Unskilled Foreign Labourers

Summary

A lot of US election campaign has been about migration this year. Mostly focussing on all the illegal immigrants entering the US.
Since 2009 US companies have, however, hired 1,4 million unskilled, foreign laborers to work on farms, in care taking jobs, etc.
The companies can hire foreign workers in the H2A and H2B visa programmes.
Here's a guideline how companies have to proceed:
Tools
Pulling all the files in and working through the relevant columns using Pandas
Clustering Company names using Word2Vec
A map of the USA with workers by state might also be interesting. Maybe even by type of worker.
I will also try do some reporting to explain the charts and the map.
Source
Data generated by the the Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC). The data is here more recently the data is faulty. In touch with their press office for them to fix the data (Reich.Egan@dol.gov, Roberts.David@dol.gov) The H2A and the H2B data seems to be correct now.
Draft of Timeline & Barchart

Timeline of hirings 2009 - 2015 unskilled_workers_hired

Top 10 companies hiring unskilled workers top10companies

II am also thinking of making a map of the us with states colored by number of unskilled workers. Maybe even work out the type of unskilled work. In the south I am expecting more farming jobs. They will be in the majority. There might, however, be jobs in some states that aren't in farming. unskilledlaborermapsketch

Pitch issue checklist

[x] My pitch issue has [Pitch] in the title
[ ] My pitch issue has [Data request] in the title if I need additional data
[x] My pitch issue links to my data set
[x] My pitch issue explains what I'd like to explore in the data set
[x] My pitch issue includes multiple possible headlines
[x] My pitch issue includes any links/images I'm using as inspiration
[ ] I have received two comments of peer feedback on my pitch issue

barjacks commented 8 years ago

Mapped out the results of total number of workers by state. workers_map

palrogg commented 8 years ago

Amazing. I love your sketch. Just a thought: the H2A and the H2B data isn't actually correct yet, if I remember right? Apart from that, I'm not convinced by the cloropleth colors, but I bet you plan to improve it for the story (as well as add some labels for the top states).

barjacks commented 8 years ago

Thanks. @palrogg. It turns out the H2A and the H2B are correct. It's the skilled worker's data PERM that is still wrong.

barjacks commented 8 years ago

I spent the afternoon adding the H1B visas, to the data I am considering. Ending up with a much more interesting data set. I am also mapping out the percentage of foreign temp workers in the work force in 2015, not the total number anymore. Makes more sense.

topjobs_map

paolorivas commented 8 years ago

Awesome! The only thing I would say is that for a non-american eye is difficult to say which state is corresponding to which figure. Besides that, its really easy to understand.

snajmabadi commented 8 years ago

This is so interesting! I love the combination of data sources, and it's so interesting to see the different types of occupations people are coming for (and to which states). One thing I mentioned is that a few of the icons look similar (landscapers and groundkeepers/forest and conservation workers). The other thing is that, to help with the clutter along the eastern seaboard, you could consider doing a map like this: http://blog.apps.npr.org/img/posts/2015-05-11-hex-tile-maps/square-tiles.png. Looking forward to the completed project!

playfairbot commented 8 years ago

Closing pitch since story has been opened at #263

jsoma / playfair-projects