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 · Housing
How much have U.S. home prices risen since 1975?
The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.
In the second quarter of 2026, FHFA's index of U.S. home prices reached 720, about 12 times its level in early 1975 (the index is 100 in the first quarter of 1980). Prices fell about 19% from their early-2007 peak to mid-2012 in the housing bust, then rose about 37% in just over two years from early 2020. The index follows repeat sales and refinance appraisals of the same single-family houses with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and it is not adjusted for inflation.
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: Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), House Price Index, all-transactions index for the U.S. (Public domain (U.S. government work; FHFA)) · Data as of Jun 30, 2026
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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