STATISTICA Blogs

State of the Union Day! 

Pardon my enthusiasm, but for political junkies, it is like Super Bowl Sunday. 

The news outlets are reporting that President Obama’s speech will center on the economy.  This speech will be followed by a Republican response that will likely give a different view of the economy.  It’s hard to know who to believe.

Luckily, you can take a look at the data for yourself.

Here is a stacked plot made from two sets of data.  I use stacked plots when I care about the trend of a total figure (in this case, the Labor Force, which consists of all Employed and Unemployed individuals) as well as the components of that total.  

Looking from 2000 to 2007, the total labor force and the number of employed persons (in orange) are growing.  To be clear, the labor force consists of people who are working or who are actively seeking work.  There is a small sliver of unemployed persons (in blue) throughout this time period.

From the plot, we can also see that the number of Employed individuals reached the highest level in November of 2007, after which the number of Unemployed individuals increased compared with the past.

But the part that has me puzzled is the fact that the labor force - the total height of the plot - has not increased for a few years now.  It’s not because our population isn’t growing, because it is.  So what is going on?

Are more people deciding they don’t need two incomes, so one parent is spending some valuable time with their young children?  Or did employees who got laid off a few years ago eventually get so discouraged and depressed at the lack of jobs that they just stopped looking altogether?  Are these people who are now outside of the labor force lying around watching TV or are they educating themselves or doing volunteer work? 

I don’t know any of these answers yet.  But see how many questions came from one simple graph?

Sometimes being able to visualize the data doesn’t give you easy answers.  But it does enable you to ask better questions.  And the ability to ask good questions of our politicians, business owners, and ourselves is what can make the state of our union stronger. 

Image Credit: Barack Obama, during the 2010 State Of The Union address 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blatantworld/5058955472/