Introduction

Which city or state is the ideal location for a MSBA student to work and live? Nowadays Big Data is a really hot topic. Accordingly, there is a big demand of data related jobs everywhere in USA, so it is difficult but necessary to choose the most suitable place. Wages, unemployment and working opportunities(eg. number of firms) should be considered at first. However, other factors like Consumer Price Index(CPI) and savings are also very important, because no matter how high a person’s wage is, his living quality can be reduced due to big living expenditure. Besides, for the long term, a person may have family in that place, so factors such as the education for children(eg. number of colleges) is nonnegligible.

Why am I so interested in this problem? Because as a STEM program student, I plan to work in USA for a few years. Unlike many other Chinese students who go back to China right after graduation, I do believe that working and living in US will be one of the most valuable treasures in my life!

Explanation of the Data Sets

I plan to use some data sets from BLS, such as Wage Data by State and by Job Characterisrics,CPI, Unemployment Rates for States, etc.

For example, the data set, Wage Data by State and by Job Characterisrics, was populated in 2016. It has the variables like Average Hourly Wage, Occupation with different job characteristics and Area(catergorized by state or metropolitan level). CPI and other variables from the data sets are also grouped by state or metropolitan level.

Methodology

I need to adjust the wages for CPI, then the wages in different areas will be comparable. And I will use summary statistics like median or mean, which depends on the degree of center of the data sets.

Mainly, I plan to use visualization to answer my question. I will use the bar chart to show that the wage differences between jobs and industries on the national level. I will also use the scatter plot to show the differences between the data grouped by area and job. What’s more, I will use other tables and charts to show some other variabls like unemployment, education, etc.

Besides, I may also use some statistical techniques like regression to analyze the relationship between the wage and other variables.

Why should you care?

In China, it isn’t very popular for people to relocate. But As far as I know, in USA, there’re many people working as analyts, who like to relocate. And for students who will go to college and graduate school to study analytics soon, it is also very important to choose a suitable place to study and build the network for career in the future. My project may give these people some suggestions.