Two good charts can use better titles

NPR has this chart, which I like:

It's a small multiples of bumps charts. Nice, clear labels. No unnecessary things like axis labels. Intuitive organization by Major Factor, Minor Factor, and Not a Factor.

Above all, the data convey a strong, surprising, message - despite many high-profile gun violence incidents this year, some Democratic voters are actually much less likely to see guns as a "major factor" in deciding their vote!

Of course, the overall importance of gun policy is down but the story of the chart is really about the collapse on the Democratic side, in a matter of two months.

The one missing thing about this chart is a nice, informative title: In two months, gun policy went from a major to a minor issue for some Democratic voters.

***

 I am impressed by this Financial Times effort:

The key here is the analysis. Most lazy analyses compare millennials to other generations but at current ages but this analyst looked at each generation at the same age range of 18 to 33 (i.e. controlling for age).

Again, the data convey a strong message - millennials have significantly higher un(der)employment than previous generations at their age range. Similar to the NPR chart above, the overall story is not nearly as interesting as the specific story - it is the pink area ("not in labour force") that is driving this trend.

Specifically, millennial unemployment rate is high because the proportion of people classified as "not in labour force" has doubled in 2014, compared to all previous generations depicted here. I really like this chart because it lays waste to a prevailing theory spread around by reputable economists - that somehow after the Great Recession, demographics trends are causing the explosion in people classified as "not in labor force". These people are nobodies when it comes to computing the unemployment rate. They literally do not count! There is simply no reason why someone just graduated from college should not be in the labour force by choice. (Dean Baker has a discussion of the theory that people not wanting to work is a long term trend.)

The legend would be better placed to the right of the columns, rather than the top.

Again, this chart benefits from a stronger headline: BLS Finds Millennials are twice as likely as previous generations to have dropped out of the labour force.