Chart assignment
Charts to read and discuss
Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.
Chart 1 of 2 · Income tax
What average income tax rate does each income group pay?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
In tax year 2023, the 0.1% of tax returns with the highest incomes paid 26.7% of their adjusted gross income in federal income tax, on average. The rate was 25.9% for the rest of the top 1%, 16.8% for the next 9%, 10.6% for the next 15%, 7.7% for the next 25% and 3.7% for the bottom half. The average rate is total income tax divided by total income for each group, which is lower than the top bracket rate (37%) because lower rates apply to the first dollars of income and to long-term capital gains and most dividends. It counts income tax after credits, never below zero, and leaves out payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, which weigh more on lower and middle incomes, as well as returns of people claimed as dependents.
Questions to discuss
- In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
- Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
- Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?
Source: IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile) (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2023
Open the chart and its numbersChart 2 of 2 · World
What is the unemployment rate in each country?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
In 2025, 4.2% of workers in the United States were unemployed, against 4.8% worldwide; the highest rate was 34.2% in Eswatini, and the lowest 0.1%, in Qatar. Search 182 countries and territories. These are the International Labour Organization's estimates, which count people without work who are looking for it and fill gaps where a country runs no regular survey, so they can differ from a country's own figures.
How to read this chart
Each bar is the share of a country's workers who have no job and are looking for one, estimated by the International Labour Organization. The dashed line is the world. People who aren't looking for work, such as students and retirees, aren't counted as unemployed at all.
Questions to discuss
- Is the United States above or below the world rate, and by about how many percentage points?
- A country can have low unemployment while many people earn very little. How is that possible?
- Why would someone who has given up looking for work not count as unemployed? Does that make the number more or less useful?
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (modeled ILO estimate) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025
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