As we all know, many people, much more than usual, have lost their jobs during the past few years. Visual Economics shows layoffs and changes in unemployment rate by industry over the last year. Obviously manufacturing has taken a huge hit along with construction.

Health care and social assistance has also seen a lot of mass layoffs, but that one I don’t really get. I’ve been under the impression there was high demand in that area. Maybe I’m wrong.

In any case, one thing that I would definitely change in this graphic, other than getting rid of those out-of-place icons, is the percent change for unemployment rate.

I thought to myself, “That bar for 2009 is over twice as tall and it’s not even a 100% increase?” Then I realized they were percentage differences, which isn’t as important the actual percent change of the rates.

Then we’d see that the unemployment rate for manufacturing has increased over 140% and for construction it’s gone up over 120%.

[Thanks, Jason]

Again, FlowingData had another record month in terms of growth, and I cannot thank you all enough for reading and spreading the word. Thank you. We’ve got quite the community developing here.

In case you missed them, here are the top posts from the past month ranked by a combination of page views, comments, and trackbacks:

1. What Visualization Tool/Software Should You Use? – Getting Started
2. Highs and Lows of Being a Young Man
3. 3 In-depth Views of Flight Delays and Cancellations
4. The World of Seinfeld
5. Vintage Infographics From the 1930s
6. Ben Fry Visualizes the Evolution of Darwin’s Ideas
7. Stimulus Funding Map is ‘Slick as Hell’
8. 10 More Infographic Reasons Why You Should Go Green
9. A Road Map to Success
10. TV Size Over the Past 8 Years

From the Forums

And here’s some of the good stuff that’s been going on in the forums in no particular order.

• Visualization/analysis tool for SSH/FTP stats – ina.Cirdaye wants your thoughts on his new tool.
• Notable Political Visualizations – How has visualization played a role in making (important) decisions in government?
• Visual Metrics to Inform: Petro-Wealth Importance
• Animated Bar Chart for CO2 emissions
• Sunlight Foundation is Looking for Data Viz Specialist – Work towards a more transparent government.

Do you have a data visualization question or have something data-ish to share? The FlowingData forums is the best place to do it, especially since I (really) suck with email now.

Like I mentioned before, Robert Kosara (EagerEyes), Andrew Vande Moere (information aesthetics) and I are hosting a workshop on Visualization on the Web this Sunday (October 11) in Atlantic City as a part of VisWeek. So if you’re in town, make sure you drop by.

We accepted topic proposals earlier last month, and those will be presented (briefly) during the workshop, and we’ll break into discussion from there. It’ll be an informal event.

Even if you didn’t submit a paper or register, you’re welcome to join. Everyone is welcome. There should be plenty of space.

Find more information on EagerEyes. Remember, this Sunday, October 11, 2:00-5:30.

Twitter shows trending topics, but it’s for the entire user base. You can only see what everyone on Twitter is talking about at any given time. Trendsmap, on the other hand, shows trending topics by location. See what’s trending in any part of the world in real-time.
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It’s exciting times for data heads. The launch of Data.gov back in May got things jump started; San Francisco recently announced DataSF; and now New York is getting in on the party with the announcement of their own Data Mine (live at 1pm EST today) and the NYC Big Apps competition.
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As we all know, Facebook lets people update their friends with status updates, and with millions of users, that’s a lot of data. Look at the aggregated data over time, and you could see some interesting trends.

The Facebook Data Team recently measured happiness in the United States based on these updates with a metric they call United States Gross National Happiness.
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In this graphic, we take a look at some data on how long you’re expected to live.

Live in Hawaii and you just might live a little longer.

Hawaii has an average life expectancy at birth of 80.0 years. It’s 72.0 years in Washington, D.C., the lowest life expectancy in the country.

This is a guest post by Craig Mod, who collaborated with Information Architects, to develop Web Trend Map. The site, which is largely inspired by iA’s previous work, lets you curate links with sources you trust. This post describes the multiple iterations and decisions made during the design process.

Design and development of webtrendmap.com v1.0 took three months. During this period the interaction design and interface underwent countless subtle permutations. What we ended up with is almost totally unlike what we started with. There was a lot of painful iteration. A lot of gut wrenching backtracking.

Let’s drill down and take a look at how we iterated on one key webtrendmap.com visual element: the Stack. Read More

Tack another graphic to the growing list of subway map metaphors. Meet the Boss “maps” Google acquisitions and investments, color-coding tracks by industry. The maroon track, for example, represents video, hence YouTube, which also interconnects with advertising and web services.

The design is nothing new (and kind of overdone), but the data are pretty interesting. I’ve never even heard of most of the acquisitions.

Does anyone know who was the first to use the subway map metaphor?

[via TechCrunch]

There’s a lot of data on the Web, but it’s all very scattered. At the same time, there’s a lot of data sitting on people’s hard drives that we don’t have access to. There are various reasons why people don’t share, but mainly, they just don’t see the point.

Infochimps tries to solve both of these problems with an open data marketplace.
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Photo by horizontal.integration

There’s this one phrase that really bothers me when it comes to data graphics. No doubt you’ve heard it or read it, and maybe it even popped into your head once or twice.

The phrase I’m talking about is: “Edward Tufte is crying.”

People like to say this when they see a graphic that doesn’t fit the ET law of high data/ink ratio. Then after the commenter has declared that ET is in fact a very emotional man, the graphic is classified “chart junk.”

First off, I’m pretty sure ET isn’t that melodramatic. He doesn’t cry over a bad graph nor does he die a little inside or roll over in his grave if he were dead. I don’t think an angel get its wings every time he rings a bell either. Although I could be wrong about the latter.

Second, not everything that fails to fit the mold of a traditional graph, visualization, or whatever you want to call it, is chart junk. One person’s chart junk is another person’s eye candy. What you see just depends on what angle you’re looking at it from.
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Online dating can be tricky. What do you say? How do you reply to people? What should you put in your profile? Should you use that profile picture from 15 years ago?

Well, fret no more, because OkCupid, an online dating service, analyzed over 500,000 introduction messages and whether or not they got a response from the message receiver. For example, the above graphs shows reply rates for intro messages that used netspeak. Here’s a tip: don’t use it, probably because it makes you sound like an idiot or you take writing advice from the comments on YouTube.

Other fine tips include: avoid compliments on physical appearance (because it’s the inside that counts) and don’t try to bring the conversation outside the service (because that’s creepy).

[via Waxy]

Apparently the average television size is going to be 60 inches by 2015. Do we really need that much television? I mean, come on.

I used to watch my mom’s old 9-inch black-and-white television in my room, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. PacMan on my cousin’s hand-me-down Atari couldn’t look any better. Things are a little different now, yeah? I wonder what my Xbox games would look like on that old TV.

Anyways, I scraped television size data from CNET reviews, representing the past eight years or so, and actually, growth isn’t as dramatic as you might think.

I’d like to take a quick moment to thank our FlowingData sponsors. They help keep FlowingData online and running smoothly. Without them, things around here would be painfully slow.

Check out the data visualization solutions they have to offer:

Xcelsius Present — Transform spreadsheets into professional, interactive presentations.

NetCharts — Build business dashboards that turn data into actionable information with dynamic charts and graphs.

Tableau Software — Data exploration and visual analytics for understanding databases and spreadsheets that makes data analysis easy and fun.

IDV Solutions — Create interactive, map-based, enterprise mashups in SharePoint.

InstantAtlas — Enables information analysts to create interactive maps to improve data visualization and enhance communication.

Want to sponsor FlowingData, your most favorite blog in the whole wide world? Email me, and I’ll get back to you with the details.

From Karl Russel and Shan Carter of The New York Times is this animated tree map to show the shrinking, and eventual partial regrowth, in market value of this country’s largest financial groups.

The market peak was in October 9, 2007. With the exception of a few months since then, most companies decreased in market capitalization. They then hit a low in March 9, 2009, and have slowly regaining what they lost.

At the peak, the value of the 29 firms was $1.87 trillion. As of September 11 of this year, their total value was at $947 billion. Clearly, there is still quite a way to go before they’re back to where they began.

[via infosthetics]

Data graphics that aren’t interactive are better in print, no doubt about it.

I realized this a few years ago while interning for a popular graphics department. It was one thing to see my graphics online, but it was always so much cooler to see them in the paper.

Online stuff is great, but it’s fleeting. You glance, scan, and browse when you’re online. You look, examine, and read when it’s in print.

Plus, paper provides more space. Data needs room to breathe.

Enter FlowingPrints.

Data + Design Posters

Simply put, FlowingPrints is a project to get data in print. It’s like FlowingData’s better looking cousin.

I mentioned the project a while ago, and I’m happy to say that the first series will be available in less than a week.

I collaborated with two designers – Atley G. Kasky and Robert Di Ieso, Jr. – to create a three-poster series around a single theme: the state of education. We looked at several decades of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Each poster gives you a different point of view, and each tells a different story.

The Authors

Atley is a graphic designer at GOOD and co-curates But Does it Float; Robert is a designer and illustrator who has done work for The New York Times, Time Inc., and Fast Company Magazine; and me, well, you already know what I do.

That should give you a hint as to what type of design you’re going to see in these posters. Needless to say, it’ll be a healthy mix of traditional statistical graphics and tasty eye candy, informative and fun to examine.

Be First to Know + Special Offer

This week, I’m putting in the finishing touches, and we’ll be ready to go. If you haven’t already, you can sign up on this page to be first to know when the series is available; I’ll email you the minute FlowingPrints goes live. It’ll be first-come, first-served.

There will also be a promotion code in the announcement email, so make sure you take advantage of that too.

More soon…

It’s not often you get a Grammy-winning band to play a song for a children’s album with an infographic music video on the scientific elements, but that’s what you get from They Might Be Giants.
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Hilarious as always, Christoph Niemann illustrates in his graphical New York Times op-ed how getting a good night’s sleep is easier said than done, especially when you have a small bladder, mosquitoes that won’t go away, and a kid with nightmares. Enjoy.
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GOOD magazine, in collaboration with Gavin Potenza, takes a look at food assistance over the past several months.

Since November 2008, there’s been an increase in the number of people who receive food assistance every month. Every month there has been more people receiving food assistance than there has ever been in the history of the program.

The graphic reads:

While some economists are declaring the recession over, and although the stock market continues to rise, those on the bottom of the economic ladder are seeing fewer improvements to their day-to-day lives. The number of Americans who receive assistance from the government in the form of food stamps continues to rise—the total number of food stamp recipients is now up to more than 10 percent of the total population. Here is how many people have been using food stamps for the nine months from September, 2008, to last May.

With that in mind, what can we do about it?