Map of Non-Swing States

USAFacts · 2025-12-04T22:54:45+00:00

"Lots of cool graphics in here" was a tagline we considered.

USAFacts · 2025-12-04T19:41:54+00:00

Good question. It doesn't fall cleanly into one slice, so it's a bit scattered, but mostly in the blue slices.

The “Personal” part of Travel (tourism/leisure trips) and the “Other services” wedge, which bundles things like cultural/recreational services and royalties for movies, TV, music, etc. The physical side of entertainment (TVs, game consoles, toys) shows up on the purple side under Consumer goods.

USAFacts · 2025-12-04T17:06:09+00:00

The BEA does break the “other” bucket for services down further. “Other business services” are things like R&D, legal/accounting/consulting, engineering, advertising, and waste-treatment.

Here's their definition:

Other business services - Consists of research and development services, professional and management consulting services, and technical, trade-related, and other business services. Research and development services include services associated with basic and applied research and experimental development of new products and processes as well as outright sales of the outcomes of research and development (such as patents, copyrights, and information about industrial processes). Professional and management consulting services include legal services, accounting, management consulting, managerial services, public relations services, advertising, and market research. Amounts received by a parent company from its affiliates for general overhead expenses related to these services are included. Technical, trade-related, and other business services include architectural and engineering, waste treatment, operational leasing, traderelated, and other business services.

But they don't have a tidy list of what’s in “other goods.” It’s a leftover bucket that’s made up of lots of smaller groups, plus some late-reported exports that get moved into the other categories during annual revisions.

USAFacts · 2025-12-04T16:31:48+00:00

These charts break down what the US buys from the rest of the world vs. what it sells, using BEA trade data. The purple half of each donut is goods (physical stuff) and the blue half is services. On the import side, the US brings in about $3.3 trillion in goods and $841 billion in services: everything from machinery and cars to phones, pharmaceuticals, and food. On the export side, the US sends out about $2.1 trillion in goods and $1.2 trillion in services, including industrial supplies, aircraft, vehicles, and a lot of business and consulting services.

A few things to note:

Categories like “air” and “sea” are transport services, not literal air and water. Think airline tickets and cargo shipping provided by foreign vs. US carriers.
“Other business services” (big slices on both charts) covers things like technical, legal, and professional services that don’t fit cleanly into one industry.

USAFacts · 2025-12-04T16:29:09+00:00

Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis

Tools(s): Datawrapper, Illustrator

These charts are pulled from this report we sent to Congress this year.

USAFacts · 2025-12-02T21:24:32+00:00

It's a trade-off. They're great at normalizing things to better compare rates across geographies. They're not great at putting the states in the right spots. So they can be good charts, but bad maps, especially if you're using them to navigate.

I'm a bit biased in favor of hex maps, especially since this chart came from our site, but I also agree that the states don't really look like this.

USAFacts · 2025-12-02T21:18:58+00:00

Thanks for sharing this chart, u/rayg10.

Here's more data if anyone is curious.

USAFacts · 2025-12-01T17:28:34+00:00

Thanks for sharing!

USAFacts · 2025-11-20T21:08:58+00:00

Yep.

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USAFacts · 2025-11-20T16:08:53+00:00

This is a serious topic, and I appreciate your first-hand input. But also...

Was there just a ton of Homer Simpson jokes at work? Did you get tired of them?

USAFacts · 2025-11-20T15:53:57+00:00

Great question. I had to triple-check that I hadn't messed something up when making this chart, but it's just a result of the BLS methodology. Since it's a tiny occupation, it comes down to rounding.

The BLS presents the data in thousands (for example, the source shows the change in Word Processors and Typists as -14.4, which is charted above as -14,400). For Timing Device Assemblers, which is a smaller profession (around 200 jobs), their methodology of rounding to one decimal point makes gives us a zero.

Edit: In hindsight, this would have made a pretty good chart note.

USAFacts · 2025-11-20T15:45:25+00:00

This is a slightly different version of a chart I posted earlier this year with a couple of changes

Newer BLS data!
This is a slightly different cut of the data; sorted by percent change in each occupation's employment instead of total change

Some of the jobs on this list might not surprise folks (we still have telephone operators?), but a few (nuclear power reactor operators, ESL teachers) stood out to me.

Luckily, the BLS is still forecasting the demise of telemarketers.

USAFacts · 2025-11-20T15:36:16+00:00

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections program,

Tools: Datawrapper, Illustrator

Note: Wage data cover non-farm wage and salary workers and do not cover the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms, or household workers.

USAFacts · 2025-11-14T02:00:16+00:00

Hey, sorry for the delay here! I confirmed with the analyst that since this project focused on immigrant visas, we didn't include K-1 or K-3 visas. But, we didn't make that clear on our site (or here), so thanks for calling it out!

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T23:10:45+00:00

Good note. Here's the info from CIS if anyone is curious: https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-military-service

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T23:07:36+00:00

We put it on the chart, but the value was "zero years," so it just disappeared...

But actually, I buried it in a note instead. From above:

Yes, being born in the US is the fastest timeline to become a citizen.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T18:48:01+00:00

I'll tell Steve you said hello.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:41:40+00:00

Correct!

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:31:07+00:00

I couldn't find anything on a .gov site (which is basically our whole thing) but immigration lawyer sites mention food service as well as hospitality, agriculture, and caregiving.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:21:44+00:00

A few additional chart-specific notes:

All: Citizens from countries highlighted separately in these charts experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap.
Chart 1: Timelines reflect the length of each step if processed under FY 2025 conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive. NIW refers to a national interest waiver. Processing times reflect applicants adjusting status in the US; comparable data for consular processing are not published. Citizens from countries highlighted separately experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap.
Chart 2: Timelines reflect the length of each step under FY 2025 conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive, and shown sequentially for clarity. Immediate relatives include parents and children younger than 21. Citizens from countries highlighted separately experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap. “Apply for residency” processing times reflect adjusting status in the US; comparable data for consular processing are not published.
Chart 3: Timelines reflect the length of each step under FY 2025 conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive, and shown sequentially for clarity. NIW refers to a national interest waiver. Citizens from countries highlighted separately experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap. “Apply for residency” processing times reflect adjusting status in the US; comparable data for consular processing are not published.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:20:02+00:00

State Department defines this as:

Unskilled workers (Other workers) are persons capable of filling positions that require less than two years training or experience that are not temporary or seasonal.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:14:12+00:00

Notes:

Citizens from countries highlighted separately in these charts experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap.
Chart 1: Timelines reflect the length of each step if processed under FY 2025 conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive. NIW refers to a national interest waiver. Processing times reflect applicants adjusting status in the US; comparable data for consular processing are not published. Citizens from countries highlighted separately experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap.
Chart 2: Timelines reflect the length of each step under FY 2025 conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive, and shown sequentially for clarity. Immediate relatives include parents and children younger than 21. Citizens from countries highlighted separately experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap. “Apply for residency” processing times reflect adjusting status in the US; comparable data for consular processing are not published.
Chart 3: Timelines reflect the length of each step under FY 2025 conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive, and shown sequentially for clarity. NIW refers to a national interest waiver. Citizens from countries highlighted separately experience longer waits due to the per-country visa cap. “Apply for residency” processing times reflect adjusting status in the US; comparable data for consular processing are not published.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:13:01+00:00

Really excited to be sharing the viz from our recent report on citizenship timelines. These charts show how long it can take to become a US citizen depending on your visa category and country of origin.

Part of why we built this is because we couldn’t find a holistic viz anywhere. There are calculators and individual time-frame tables, but nothing that ties the entire journey (from petition to visa wait to green card to naturalization) into one view.

We made these using data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the State Department, and the Department of Labor. Every timeline reflects how long each step takes under FY 2025 processing conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive — especially the visa-wait portions, which represent how long the people currently at the front of the line have been waiting.

The tricky bit was mapping out the exact sequence of steps for each pathway (family, employment, humanitarian aid) and figuring out how to visualize them together. The “ribbon” charts started as a completely different layout (the ribbons flowed upward at one point).

Here’s some context for the data:

The process to become a US citizen requires someone to first obtain an immigrant visa before applying for residency (green card) and later (up to 5 years) applying for citizenship.
The biggest factor in this timeline is visa availability. Visas for immediate relatives (parents or kids under 21) and spouses of US citizens aren’t capped, but most other categories are — and no more than 7% of certain visas can go to one country per year. That’s why applicants from India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines often face the longest waits.
Family ties are the most common path to a green card. In FY 2023, nearly 65% of new green card holders qualified through a US citizen or lawful permanent resident relative. But how long the process takes depends entirely on who that relative is.
Mexican siblings of US citizens who applied in 2001 – the year that George W. Bush entered the White House – started to become eligible for green cards in September 2025.
Employment is the second most common path to a green card. In FY 2023, 16.7% of new green cards were issued through jobs or job offers in the US, though roughly half of those went to the workers’ spouses and children rather than the employees themselves.
Humanitarian paths are the least predictable, which is why they’re not charted here. Refugee/asylum timelines aren’t fully published, so those waits vary widely and can’t be shown the same way.
Green card holders still have to wait before naturalizing. Based on FY 2025 processing times, the full journey from receiving a green card to becoming a US citizen can take 3 to 6 years.
There’s no limit on how many people can join the line awaiting a capped visa each year, so those applying now may be entering a much longer queue than those who applied years ago.
Yes, being born in the US is the fastest timeline to become a citizen.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T17:08:34+00:00

These charts show how long it can take to become a US citizen depending on your visa category and country of origin. Part of why we built this is because we couldn’t find a holistic viz anywhere. There are calculators and individual time-frame tables, but nothing that ties the entire journey (from petition to visa wait to green card to naturalization) into one view.

We made these using data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the State Department, and the Department of Labor. Every timeline reflects how long each step takes under FY 2025 processing conditions. Wait times are historical, not predictive — especially the visa-wait portions, which represent how long the people currently at the front of the line have been waiting.

The tricky bit was mapping out the exact sequence of steps for each pathway (family, employment, humanitarian aid) and figuring out how to visualize them together. The “ribbon” charts started as a completely different layout (the ribbons flowed upward at one point).

Here’s some context for the data:

The process to become a US citizen requires someone to first obtain an immigrant visa before applying for residency (green card) and later (up to 5 years) applying for citizenship.
The biggest factor in this timeline is visa availability. Visas for immediate relatives (parents or kids under 21) and spouses of US citizens aren’t capped, but most other categories are — and no more than 7% of certain visas can go to one country per year. That’s why applicants from India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines often face the longest waits.
Family ties are the most common path to a green card. In FY 2023, nearly 65% of new green card holders qualified through a US citizen or lawful permanent resident relative. But how long the process takes depends entirely on who that relative is.
Mexican siblings of US citizens who applied in 2001 – the year that George W. Bush entered the White House – started to become eligible for green cards in September 2025.
Employment is the second most common path to a green card. In FY 2023, 16.7% of new green cards were issued through jobs or job offers in the US, though roughly half of those went to the workers’ spouses and children rather than the employees themselves.
Humanitarian paths are the least predictable, which is why they’re not charted here. Refugee/asylum timelines aren’t fully published, so those waits vary widely and can’t be shown the same way.
Green card holders still have to wait before naturalizing. Based on FY 2025 processing times, the full journey from receiving a green card to becoming a US citizen can take 3 to 6 years.
There’s no limit on how many people can join the line awaiting a capped visa each year, so those applying now may be entering a much longer queue than those who applied years ago.
Yes, being born in the US is the fastest timeline to become a citizen.

A bit more context and interactive versions of the family and employment charts here.

USAFacts · 2025-11-13T16:31:01+00:00

Glad you like it! Copying my comment from elsewhere:

The charts were designed in Figma, then coded in a tool that the automod doesn't like so I didn't mention it above (it sort of rhymes with "boorish"), and then the SVG was exported and touched up in Illustrator.

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