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.

  1. Where did home prices rise most in the last year?
  2. What is the unemployment rate in each country?

Chart 1 of 2 · Housing

Where did home prices rise most in the last year?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

In the year to June 2026, the change in home prices was highest in Hawaii (8.7%), West Virginia (8.0%) and Illinois (6.0%), on FHFA's index, and lowest in Colorado (0.2%) and District of Columbia (-0.6%); across the U.S. it was 3.0%. The index follows repeat sales and refinance appraisals of the same single-family houses with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, is not adjusted for inflation, and can swing more in small states with fewer sales.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), House Price Index, all-transactions index by state (Public domain (U.S. government work; FHFA)) · Data as of Jun 30, 2026

Open the chart and its numbers

Chart 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

  1. Is the United States above or below the world rate, and by about how many percentage points?
  2. A country can have low unemployment while many people earn very little. How is that possible?
  3. 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

Open the chart and its numbers

Teachers: make your own chart assignment, or change this one. Free, no account needed.