Design Critique

The Visualization

Source

The visualization discussed in this page was created by The UpShot and published by The New York Times on June 6, 2014. It is part of their article titled "How the Recession Reshaped the Economy, in 255 Charts."

Purpose

This visualization was created to demonstrate how the Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009) impacted the job market in the United States. The users of the visualization are the readers of The New York Times, specifically those interested in economic trends.

Data

The data was gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Employment Statistics program. This program provides monthly reports based on surveys of businesses in hundreds of industries. The data spans from January 2004 to April 2014 and represents 255 job categories within the following 22 industries:

Business
Buying & Selling
Construction
Eating & Drinking
Energy & Resources
Entertainment
Finance
Heath
Home
Insurance
Manufacturing
Media
Other Services
Private Services
Professional Services
Real Estate
Research
Retail
Social Services & Organizations
Sports
Transportation
Travel

The data shown includes the average salary and number of jobs in each of the 255 categories. The average salary data was adjusted for inflation, and it includes salaries from employees from all job levels (entry-level to executive).

Explanation of Visualization

Main Visualization

Within the main visualization (multi-line chart), the x-axis represents the average wage, and the y-axis represents the number of jobs. There is a line for each of the 255 groups of jobs, within 22 industries. The color of the lines represents how affected the group of jobs was by the recession; green means that it recovered or was unaffected, and red/orange means that it hasn't recovered or has otherwise declined. When any line is hovered over, a supporting visualization is shown for that job group.

Supporting Visualizations

Within the supporting visualizations (area charts), the x-axis represents the date (month and year) and the y-axis represents the percent increase/decrease in the number of jobs. The color coding remains the same as in the main visualization. The article also provides all of the supporting visualizations grouped by industry below the main visualization.

Questions & Answer Discovery

The following questions can be answered by viewing the main or supporting visualizations.

"What was the overall effect of the Great Recession on the job market?"

This can be found by identifying trends in the lines of the main visualization.

"How was a specific industry affected by the recession?"

Users can find trends in the grouped supporting visualizations for that industry (e.g., are all of them green/red?).

"What was the trend in salary and number of jobs for a specific job group?"

The details of the supporting visualization for that job group should be viewed.

"Are there any correlations between two industries?"

Users should analyze the lines for related or opposing industries in the complete visualization (e.g., are both of them increasing/decreasing, or are they moving in opposite directions?).

Enabled Insights

The Article's Insights

The authors of the article posted additional views of the main visualization to demonstrate some findings. See below for what they highlighted.

Growth of Low and High Paying Job Groups

Both low-paying job groups (e.g., fast food) grew, as did high-paying groups (e.g., consulting, computing, biotechnology).

Growth of the Medical Industry

Medical jobs are considered middle-wage, and these job categories grew after the recession.

Decline of Real Estate and Construction Industries

Construction and real estate categories lost 19% of their jobs since the start of the recession.

Mixed Trends in Manufacturing Job Groups

Manufacturing jobs that require lots of labor faced global competition, causing a decline. Higher-paying jobs in export-heavy industries grew.

Growth of Oil and Gas Industries

Oil and gas extraction grew greatly after the recession.

Growth of Digital Industries and Decline of Print Industries

Digital jobs grew greatly, while print jobs declined.

Growth of Beauty and Pet Industries

Beauty jobs and those related to pet boarding, grooming, and training grew after the recession and weren't affected much to begin with.

My Insights

Group with the Most Jobs

There is a much greater amount of jobs related to electronic shopping and auctions (e.g., Amazon) than there is for any other individual job category. In April 2014, there were 165,300 jobs in that category.

Group with the Fewest Jobs

Land subdivision is the category with the smallest number of jobs at any point in this visualization. Its lowest point was in September 2012, with only 40,500 jobs.

Highest Paying Group

Software publishers make the greatest amount of money on average compared to the other groups in the visualization. In April of 2014, the average salary was $107,765.

Critique

Effective Design Choices

Main Visualization

Using lines for each job group allows for lots of data in a single view.
Adding the wage along the x-axis helps to prevent a lot of overlap, which would make the visualization difficult to view/analyze.

Supporting Visualizations

The translucent red bar on each area graph, signifying the time of the recession, helps to highlight the change in the jobs that occurred during the recession.
The color coding is helpful, as some area charts appear similar but are colored differently (signifying different effects of the recession).

Limitations and Suggested Improvements

Users can't single out specific industries in the main graph. The area charts of job categories being grouped by their industries is helpful, but being able to highlight data on the line chart could be better for direct comparisons. This is especially true because some of the supporting visualizations have different y-axis scales, which can be misleading to users.
The salaries of various job levels (entry-level to executive-level) are all combined to get the average salaries shown in the main and supporting visualizations. Being able to filter data shown in both visualizations by the job level could help users uncover more trends. For example, were entry-level jobs more affected than those at the executive level?
Color is used to signify the effect of the recession in both the main and supporting visualizations. This is helpful in the supporting visualizations, but, in the main visualization, the effect of the recession can be determined by the location of the line in relation to the dashed line in the middle of the main visualization (above the dashed line means that it recovered and below means that it didn't). I suggest that color in the main visualization is instead used to separate industries, which would help users uncover trends more easily (e.g., all job categories within the Business industry are blue).
Color-blind users may have trouble distinguishing between the greens and reds used for marking the effect of the recession on job categories. Using a different color encoding could be better.

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