Unveiling the Impact: A Deep Dive into COVID-19’s Effect on the US Economy

As 2023 draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the journey of completing my Master’s in Marketing Analytics at the Illinois Institute of Technology. It was a period not just of academic growth but also of personal discovery, challenges, and accomplishments that have left a lifelong mark on my professional and personal life.

During my master’s in marketing analytics at IIT Stuart School of Business, I immersed myself in a captivating and insightful journey into visual analytics. Among the various projects and coursework, one that stands out is the comprehensive research project on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP), labor, and housing markets.

The project commenced in our Visual Analytics course, where we heavily utilized Tableau for creating marketing and business dashboards. The objective was clear but challenging: to analyze and visualize the multifaceted effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on key economic indicators. Working in a group of three, I set out to unravel the complexities of the pandemic’s economic repercussions.

The first task was to meticulously collect and curate data from reliable sources, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This involved gathering information on GDP trends, employment statistics, and housing market fluctuations before, during and after the pandemic.

Tableau served as a primary tool for transforming raw data into insightful visualizations. With my team, I created a series of dashboards that not only highlighted statistical changes but also told the story of the pandemic’s economic impact in a compelling and understandable manner. These dashboards were a blend of bar graphs, line charts, and heat maps, each chosen for their ability to best represent different aspects of the data.

This project was not just an academic requirement; it was a journey into the heart of how visual analytics can be a powerful tool for understanding and communicating complex economic trends. It underscored the importance of data-driven decision-making in times of crisis and the need for agile and informed responses in the face of economic disruptions.

Please take a minute to explore some of the visualizations from this project.

All visualizations can be found here. P.S., there may be rendering issues in stories 1 & 5 and if you would like to see a non-distorted version, feel free to contact me at efe.uduig@gmail.com.

Thank you for reading :)