We all know that our economy is continuing on a disasterous path. Many are out of work and struggling to find a good enough job to pay the bills. All that is being said is how hard it is to find a job, especially for recently graduated college students. The advice my generation gets is to stay in college as long as we can or at least until the economy gets better. The Millenial generation consists of 18 to 29 year olds and in an article featured in USA Today, "Study: Millennial generation more educated, less employed," it points out the differences in our generation compared to the past.
The charts next to the article, provided by Pew Research Center, depicted Millennials' most important things in their lives. The format was a bar graph with a percentage at the end of each bar. The categories were being a good parent 52%, having a successful marriage 30%, helping others in need 21%, owning a home 20%, living a very religious life 15%, having lots of free time 9%, and becoming famous 1%. This visual did not really relate to what the article was trying to make clear, which was how much this generation is educated, but at the same time make up the greatest share of unemployed. It seems like the chart, though clear, was pointless to add. It basically fills up the white space so it seems to be an important issue.
Another bar graph was shown below the first one. It's like USA Today couldn't think of a better way to present the information in a more mature way. The bar graph was designed to show the full-time employment by generation comparing Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers. It compared two years, 2006 and 2010. The graph basically summed up what the article said, Millennials have the highest percentage difference in employment over the years. This graph could be helpful to someone who is on the go and doesn't have time to read the article, but at the same time is extremely repetitive.
The article was interesting and newsworthy in itself, but the graphs really didn't support it as much as they could have. Each graph was easy to interpret, but irrelevant. I would have liked to see statistics that relate to the articles main point, not just meaningless percentages. I think USA Today needs to work on its images so that readers are drawn to both the articles and the visuals.
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I agree with you that the first graph really doesn't have anything to do with the article. The only logical thing that I can think of for including that graph is that only 15% of those surveyed said that a well-paying job was one of their top priorities. Maybe that was why the Millennial generation is less employed? They don't care as much?
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the second graph related more to the article, but was also quite boring. Every other chart or graph on the USA Today website looks crazy and excessive. How is it that this one didn't look like that?
-Audrey Posten