Unemployment Rates in the US: September 2009

This visualization is an illustration of the unemployment in the United States during the month of September in the year 2009. The national average rate of unemployment during this time is at 8.9%, and this diagram displays the way the statistics are distributed among the various counties across the nation. The visualization makes effective use of color, using contrasting colors between higher and lower rates. This helps facilitate visual cognition, allowing readers to easily distinguish the variations in the data represented. Although this is supposed to be a representation of unemployment rates by county, it is almost impossible to isolate a single county due to its small size and lack of labeling. However, the purpose of this visualization is to display the distribution of unemployment and moreover the concentration of higher rates in the more industrialized areas. The Midwest displays the lower rates of unemployment, and this diagram is meant to highlight this matter. The effective use of color in this visualization allows readers to much easier make this distinction and draw educated conclusions given the displayed data.