NEETs in England, 2000 to 2011 (Animated Chart)

The news last week that the number of 16 to 24 year olds in England not in education, employment or training (NEET) reached an all-time high was widely covered, and quite shocking since there are now 1.16 million 16 to 24 year olds in this category. I thought it might be quite interesting to look at the data more closely to see how it compares to other time periods. The Department for Education publish the NEET data on a quarterly basis and the most recent data are for the third quarter of 2011 at the regional level. "What would the quarterly data look like in an animated bar chart?", I hear you say. Click the image below to find out!

Click to see a full size version of this animation.

I should say that you'll need to watch the clip a few times in order to make sense of it (and use the pause button), but once you get your head round it, it tells an interesting story (it also dances a bit like an equalizer on an old stereo). The lowest NEET total for England was in the second quarter of 2000 (629,000) and the highest total comes from the third quarter of 2011 (1,163,000). The highest regional percentage figure for NEETs was in the third quarter of 2011 in the North West (23.9%) and the lowest was in the last quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004 in the South West (7.4%).

Lots of interesting stories here but the most striking thing is the total number of NEETs in England. 

Note: I created this using Google's motion charts and recorded it using Camtasia.

Google Motion Charts

This post is about Google's motion charts and how useful they are for displaying data in a dynamic format. In this example, I've taken data for four cities in the north of England, and compared change over time from 2000 to 2008. I've used the following indicators:

• Total population - from ONS mid-year population estimates
• Working age population - from ONS mid-year population estimates
• VAT Stock at end of year - from NOMIS, a measure of business vitality (only got up to 2007 for this)
• Claimant Count - from NOMIS, those claiming unemployment benefit
• House prices - median house price for each area, from CLG Live Tables

You can compare any data against any data by clicking below and beside each axis. You can size the bubbles according to any variable and choose to turn any area's data on or off. They're really easy to use. Try experimenting with the example below, or the larger version I've linked to (note that you can click the tabs to the top right of the chart for a different data view). Pressing the 'play' button in the bottom left of the chart will start the animation.



All you need to make this is a some data and a free Google account. And a bit of time and patience. Once you get how it works it's really easy, and very effective. This is just an example using some English data.

For a REALLY impressive demonstration, see gapminder.

For a larger version of the chart shown below, I've put together a separate page.