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Data analysis of US imports from West Africa: 2012 to 2021

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INTRODUCTION   The demand for consumer and capital goods has grown steadily in Africa leading to a high dependency on imports from countries like China and the United States. Major African imports, based on current import and export statistics, include automobiles and their spare parts, clothing and other fashion accessories, computers and other IT products, mobile phones, pharmaceuticals, machinery, stationery, and agricultural products. Data shows that in 2021 the United States exports to Africa valued at $26,669 million as against its imports value of $37,561.9 million, indicating a trade imbalance between the U.S and Africa for the year. The United States Census Bureau’s website, where these figures were disclosed, also revealed values of the U.S trade in goods with global partner countries by month from 1997 to date. However, this study is not to examine all branches of foreign trade between the U.S and its partner countries but to focus on analyzing data on U.S imports from...
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Predicting Unemployment Insurance Improper Payment Rates in the United States with Machine Learning

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This project is to predict improper payment of unemployment insurance benefits based on overpayment rate, underpayment rate, and fraud rate. Data used was accessed from the US Department of Labor website.  The dataset shows the amount paid in benefits, amounts overpaid and underpaid, overpayment and underpayment rates, improperly paid rate, the amount overpaid excluding work search, fraud rate for each state in the United States over the third quarter of 2020 through the first quarter of 2021. Since the focus of the project is to predict improper payment rates, the dataset was cleaned to show the payment rates as feature variables and States as the independent variables. The response variable, which is the improper payment rate, is predicted to yield numerical results based off of the overpayment rate, underpayment rate, and fraud rate.  For this predictive analysis, supervised machine learning regression techniques were used.  Necessary package libraries including Pandas...
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Impact of Expanded Unemployment Benefits on Texas Unemployment Rate after lift of COVID restrictions

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  INTRODUCTION On March 2, 2021, Texas State governor, Greg Abbot, issued a decisive executive order to reopen the state locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Activities resumed in the state but with a slow return to work even with COVID restrictions lifted. Some business owners complained that they’re struggling to fill jobs, since the opening of the state, arguing this to be a result of unemployed Texans making more money on expanded unemployment benefits provided by the federal government. This argument triggered Governor Abbot’s ending of expanded unemployment benefits on June 26, 2021, to encourage a full return to work of the totally and partially insured unemployed Texans claiming benefits under the programs . Megan Menchaca and Mitchell Ferman quote Abbot as stating in a press release sent from the governor’s office, “The Texas economy is booming and employers are hiring in communities throughout the state...  According to the Texas Workforce Commission, the num...
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