Tag: Employment

What are the most common occupations in each US state?

When I’m at a social gathering, someone always asks what type of work I do. I like to keep my social life separate from my work, therefore I usually give a vague answer such as “software” (and quickly change the topic). How vague or specific is your re…

Risks to US employment – automation and offshoring

Employment – that’s been a hot topic here in the US lately. Many of the manufacturing jobs we had in past decades are gone now, and it would be great if there was a crystal ball to predict which jobs might be at risk of disappearing in the future. The …

How to ‘stack the deck’ for a better graph!

To stack the deck means to cheat or to fix something so a desired outcome is achieved. This term originated in card games, but can also be applied to other things. And here, I apply it (both metaphorically and literally) to creating a better graph! I r…

Several ways to look at US unemployment data

The US unemployment rate was down to 4.4% in April, which is the lowest we’ve seen since before the big recession (about 10 years ago). But a single number seldom tells the whole story, so let’s look at unemployment data in several different ways, to g…

U.S. federal government is shrinking

I was surprised to find that the size of the U.S. federal government is smaller today, than in the past many decades – let’s graph it out, so it’s easy to analyze… The way I got started on this little adventure was via Jishai’s graph on dadaviz.com. Here’s a snapshot […]

The post U.S. federal government is shrinking appeared first on The SAS Training Post.

Six things I learned in Six Weeks

A few things I’ve noticed in my first six weeks in the private sector: People have varying standards of quality work – Coworker A checked every last number (by hand!) on a 32 page report that involved combining PDF’s and we weren’t able to import into SAS.  Coworker B missed that my sum of four […]

One Week Down

A few things I learned during my first few days: Learning the data (aka Medical Billing Terminology) is going to be the toughest challenge. The one-week SQL crash course was a very good idea. Not having access to the TAB key makes code styling a pain. (SAS on Unix hints?) I really need reading glasses. […]

Starting Over

Today is my last day weekday without a boss! I’ve throughly enjoyed the last two weeks of being temporarily unemployed but I’m ready to get back to work. I’m slightly nervous about the new position as I have no insiders at the new company. In the past, I’ve always known somebody on the inside and […]