An Economic Analysis of Virginia from 2001 to 2018

As globalization and interstate commerce continue to permeate the US economy, the opportunities for growth and development for businesses among a variety of sectors have likewise expanded notably over the last two decades. One state that has especially drawn attention as of late for its economic potence is Virginia, partly on account of its proximity to Washington, DC, as well as the nationwide shift toward technologically-oriented jobs.

Our data can be found at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and downloaded and converted as CSV files with the help of Pandas.  After cleaning up our data to focus on the years 2001 through 2018, we will first look at trends in personal and per capita income in both absolute and relative figures.  Similarly, we will pivot toward population, and isolate the areas with the most significant absolute and relative shifts in this regard.  Finally, we will expand our inquiry toward identifying which areas contributed the most in terms of GDP and share of GDP for a given industry.  As an extension to this last point, we will also determine the most significant sectors for a given area, and based on their share values evaluate whether or not that area reported a diversified economy, or relied disproportionately on one particular sector.  With this in mind, we can deduce if there are any industries drawing more people toward certain areas.

The ind_gdp and pop_inc data sets used for this project are available for you to view and save for later.