In the 15 April 2009 issue of Slate, Chris Wilson wrote An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country. In the article is an animation of monthly job loss and gain by county from January 2007 through February 2009. Watch what starts to happen in August 2008. Frightening.
[See Steve’s comment on interpreting the monthly changes.]Leave a comment
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There are no embeddable graphics available as far as I can tell.
This story does come under the purview of Greenberg’s Law Of The Media.
Note that the job statistics compare the data for any particular month with the data for the same month in the previous year. This means that when job growth from the preceding month begins, it will not show up in this animation right away. Not until the number of jobs exceeds the number of jobs from 12 months ago, will the animation turn positive.
This is not dishonest, but you do have to keep in mind that the way they have chosen to portray the data is the way that will postpone a positive result for the longest possible time.