Because there are more women in nursing than men and because it is a career with an above-average burn-our rate, it is not uncommon for women to leave the nursing workforce after 5-10 years to either raise their family or try other professions. This has been one of the reasons for the growing nursing shortage in the U.S over the past decade. When this economic downturn occurred, however, many of these semi-retired nurses (my wife included) had to return to the workforce because of financial pressures (their husbands were laid off from their jobs, risk of foreclosure due to variable interest rate changes, etc). Within a period a just a year, therefore, hospitals went from extremely desperate for nursing staff ($10,000 signing bonuses were not uncommon then) to being absolutely flooded with job applications. In addition, this occurred at the same time that hospitals were forced to reduce costs, which included cutting staff at all levels and increasing patient to nursing ratios.

Bottom line – your visualization does not lie. There has been layoff in the healthcare industry, despite a general public perception that healthcare demand was high. Score another for the value of visualizations for gaining insight into complex problems. Keep up the good work.

Damon

No: It is better to see the actual rate of unemployment for both years. A change from 0.05 to 0.1 would look the same as a change from .2 to .4 by your transform. The plot is fine as is- though hey might remove the unecessary percent change text underneath the bars which is redundant and patronising in the extreme.