Data visualization: Rise and fall of Missouri jobs

December 30, 2009 by Kurt
Filed under: st. louis 
Rise and fall of jobs in Missouri and the St. Louis area.

Rise and fall of jobs in Missouri and the St. Louis area.

I love this visualization of how jobs have fluctuated over the past five years in the St. Louis area. Link to see the functioning graphic on my colleague Steve Giegerich’s blog, STL JobWatch. The graphic shows expanding and contracting circles each month over the past five years, representing how many jobs were added or subjected to the economy each month.

Post-Dispatch interactive designers Brian Williamson and Erica Smith created the graphic based on research I’d done with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which adjusted the data for seasonality.

The graphic, a snapshot of area employment, reflects the counties and cities where the employed and unemployed reside and not, necessarily, the business locations where they work or worked. The graphic includes representations of the rise and fall of jobs in the St. Louis metropolitan area and the major metro areas of Missouri.

A similar graphic of the national employment scene, designed by TIP Strategies, provided the inspiration for this map.

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Comments

  • Lisbeth: Thanks for the comment. I hope you got to see the animated version on Steve Giegerich's blog. That's the one that tracks month-to-month, and you should see a lot of fluctuation in jobs gained and lost. Happy New Year.
  • This is very interesting, albeit disconcerting. Obviously, only jobs were lost in the region, none gained - at least I'm not seeing any green on my computer screen. I suppose St. Louis is lucky in comparison to other communities, but with all the corporations that have defected from the region, where are people to go for work? Thanks for taking a complex notion and making it easy to understand!
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