Ten years of inflation, one spike

The message

After years of low inflation, U.S. prices jumped in 2021 and 2022, peaking at 8.0 percent, then cooled. The 2022 bar is the story. Everything else is the context that makes it look tall.

Bars, not a line

These are ten separate annual rates, each one a change over the previous year. Bars treat each year as its own amount, which matches the data. A line would suggest a continuous price level, and people would misread it as prices falling in 2023, when what fell was the rate of increase. Prices still rose 4.1 percent that year.

That misreading ("inflation went down, so prices went down") is the most common error with this kind of chart, so the subtitle states plainly what each bar measures.

One highlighted bar

The 2022 bar is in the accent color and the rest are gray. This is the simplest emphasis technique there is and still the most reliable. It also leaves room for the annotation "2022: 8.0%" in the same color, so the label and the bar read together.

Every bar also carries its value. With only ten bars, labels don't crowd the chart, and they spare readers from estimating against the gridlines.

Which inflation number

"Inflation" can mean several measures. We used the CPI-U annual average, the figure BLS publishes for each calendar year. December-to-December changes give different numbers for the same year (2022 was 6.5 percent on that basis), and the Federal Reserve's 2 percent goal is measured on a different index (PCE). If you make a similar chart, name the measure on the graphic. Mixing them is how two articles end up quoting different inflation numbers for the same year.

Details

• Year labels are shortened to '15, '16 and so on. Ten four-digit years don't fit under narrow bars on a phone.
• The bars have slightly rounded tops and square bottoms, so they sit on the baseline.
• Gridlines are dashed and light. They help with reading values but shouldn't compete with the bars.