[nextstep]

It would be cool if on the bar chart the two bars for each agency could be combined; make the furloughed employees in blue and show the rest of the agency in grey-blue or something like that, so it more visually shows how the agencies are diminished.

[arscan]

If the author chooses to do this, absolutely get rid of the log scale. The chart makes it look like 95% of the DoD civilians are on furlough. Its 50%. The author is simply trying to show too much on that chart, and s/he is inadvertently making it look way worse to the average person (who doesn't know what a log scale is) than is intended.

I may lose my salary because of this shutdown (this thing affects way more than direct govt employees), so I am probably biased towards making this seem as bad as possible. But I can't stand charts that are misleading.

[Avitas]

Seconded--I like seeing my data on a linear scale.

[_7fvc]

The best way to visualize this I think is with pie chart. I made one here:

http://vida.io/discussion/WgBMc4zDWF7YpqXGR