How much does each stimulus job cost?

Overview: At recovery.gov, anyone can access all kinds of data on the Recovery Act. Most of it is nicely presented, but the important part is that each dataset is available as a CSV, which invites us regular people to see what we can find. Here is a presentation of one dataset, the total amount awarded to and number of jobs created by each state.

Jobs Created

First, a map showing the relative amount of jobs created in each state. Darker colors represent more jobs.

The top four states by population are the top job gainers, but not in the same order. Florida beat everyone out to take the top spot.

Money Awarded

Second, a map showing the relative amount of money awarded to each state. Darker colors represent more money.

Not too many surprises here; most states that created the most jobs received the most money.

Dollars per Job

Finally, a map showing the relative amount of money each job cost in each state. Darker colors represent lower cost.

Florida comes out on top. Not only did it create the most jobs but it did so at the lowest cost.

Illinois is interesting because it was fifth highest for money received but came in 43rd with respect to cost per job.

States at the bottom include Alaska, New Jersey, Utah, Wisconsin, Nevada and Minnesota. Each of these took more than $500K to create a job.

All told, the average cost per job was $269,439.50.

Future possibilities:

Normalize the data to the population of each state.
Compare rank rather than raw numbers.

Related post on blog. Using d3.js, 960.gs, svgboilerplate. Map from wikipedia (cleaned up version here). Cleaned up data available here.