Joe Murphy

@joemurph.bsky.social

4957 Followers 1970 Following

Data editor @ NBC News, @NBCguild.bsky.social strong, Oregonian born & raised, lives in NYC (Gowanus, Brooklyn). Formerly: NY Daily News, Denver Post, Medill. Into dataviz, data pipelines, accessibility, a good story. joemurph.76 @ signal joemurph.com

This is a square map chart of the U.S. showing reductions in federal staff across the nation. Hawaii, Maine and Virginia had the largest declines. Atop the chart is the text "The DOGE job cuts didn’t just hit D.C."
It’s no secret that the job market stinks right now. But for soon-to-be college graduates, like myself, breaking into the workforce is harder now than it used to be. I analyzed data and spoke with experts from job platforms LinkedIn, Indeed and Handshake and found that fewer entry-level jobs are available to this year’s graduates than to their peers in previous years. And when they enter the job market, students are receiving fewer offers despite submitting more applications. Most people hold the belief that earning a college degree is a guaranteed way to advance your career, and that’s still true for some folks. But for the class of 2026, that guarantee may take more time. Explore more of the data and some of the factors putting a damper on entry-level hiring. — Ashley Mowreader, data graphics intern
This is a column chart showing the rate of hiring among entry-level talent on LinkedIn compared to June 2019. There was a drastic drop in the first year of the pandemic, followed by an increase of 29% in 2021. Since then, each year has seen a lower percentage of entry-level hiring rates, which have descended each year and is down 24% so far this year. Atop the chart is the text "The job market for new grads keeps getting worse: Full-time job postings for graduating college seniors are on the decline."
This is a column chart showing the rate of hiring among entry-level talent on LinkedIn compared to June 2019. There was a drastic drop in the first year of the pandemic, followed by an increase of 29% in 2021. Since then, each year has seen a lower percentage of entry-level hiring rates, which have descended each year and is down 24% so far this year. Atop the chart is the text "The job market for new grads keeps getting worse: Full-time job postings for graduating college seniors are on the decline."
python code and results: >>> import math >>> a = 4.06 >>> print(math.floor(a*100)) 405 >>> print(a*100) 405.99999999999994
code: let b = 4.06 Math.floor(b*100) returns 405 b*100 returns 405.99999999994
A graphic tracking the World Cup goals scored by Messi and Mbappé. Messi had 13 goals going into this year’s tournament and has scored eight this year so far, totalling 21 goals. Mbappé had 12 goals heading into this year, and has scored ten so far. His total is 22 goals, which means he holds the current record of the most career World Cup goals.
This diagram compares the size of a typical grain of sand with smaller objects: the width of a strand of hair (about half the size), a speck of dust (about one-tenth the size), and wildfire smoke PM2.5 particles (about one-thirtieth the size of sand). Next to the diagram is the text "Small but dangerous: Tinier than a grain of sand, smaller than a speck of dust, the PM2.5 particles found in wildfire smoke can travel deep into the lungs."
This is a chart showing the average number of goals scored per game at World Cup tournaments since 1950. The 1954 World Cup had an average of 5.4 goals per game; the 2026 tournament had a rate of 2.9 goals per game, which is the most since the 1970 tournament.
A visualization of the state of the pitch in the France / Morocco World Cup 2026 game at the point when Kylian Mbappe took a penalty kick. France's forces are collected in the center near the Moroccan gaol, Moroccos forces are around the side.
This diagram examines the 2026 World Cup soccer ball, called the Trionda, and its features. It has a four-panel design, the fewest amount of panels of any World Cup ball. The 2022 ball had 20 panels, the 2014 ball had six, the 2010 had 10, and the 2002 ball had 32 panels. The Trionda also has a side-mounted microchip, which is balanced by multiple counter-weights inside the ball.
A screenshot of a deleted post.
Joe's commutes: Last 8 weeks Of those 8 weeks, Joe commuted in 8 of those. Of the commute weeks, an average of 3.12 commutes per week were made. Across all 8 weeks, that's 3.12 commutes per week. In all, Joe commuted 25 days. On average, a day's commute took 104.9 minutes, and at most it took 152 and at the least it took 61. Last 26 weeks: Of those 26 weeks, Joe commuted in 23 of those. Of the commute weeks, an average of 2.96 commutes per week were made. Across all 26 weeks, that's 2.62 commutes per week. In all, Joe commuted 68 days. On average, a day's commute took 108.6 minutes, and at most it took 211 and at the least it took 61.
A graphic tracking the World Cup goals scored by Messi and Mbappé. Messi had 13 goals going into this year’s tournament and has scored five this year so far. He holds the current record of the most World Cup goals at 18. Mbappé had 12 goals heading into this year, and has scored four so far. His total is 16 goals.
A sign of the "Rocky" in "Rocky Mountain News" dangling from a rope heading down with part of Denver's skyline in the background.
22 fountains. 22 ships. 22 bombers. And 22 Nobel Prize winners. Donald Trump may be the 80-year-old who is both the 45th and 47th president of the United States, but lately, his favorite number seems to be 22. “We had 22 fountains, every one of them didn’t work,” Trump said recently in the Oval Office, referring to ongoing renovations of public spaces in Washington, D.C. “All 22 have now been opened.”
This screenshot of an interactive calculator shows the added cost of gas since the start of the Iran war for someone who lives in Colorado, drives a car with a 15-gallon tank and fills up 4 times per month. It's $330, of the approximately $960 they paid for gas – about $17 more per fill-up.
This diagram shows NASA's new space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, and its various features: a Deployable Aperture Cover, a solar sunshield, a High gain Antenna, and other elements.
Video of people on the sidewalk dancing around and celebrating, and you can hear fireworks going off.
A three-dimensional rendering of the Statue of Liberty, $1.77 trillion in stacked hundred dollar bills, a SpaceX rocket and other comparable items. The stacked money takes up quite a bit more space than the Statue of Liberty – and, when you look at the $1 billion in stacked bills next to it, the billion looks miniscule. Atop this rendering is the text "A trillion, visualized: The SpaceX IPO valuation is orders of magnitude larger than Tesla’s 2010 IPO valuation."
David Hockney's poster print of a man diving into a pool.
This chart shows the number of vacancies and temporary hires among leadership positions in the Dept. of Health and Human Services (4 vacancies, 4 temporary hires out of 31 positions), the National Institutes of Health (15 temporary hires out of 33), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1 vacancy, 13 temporary hires out of 27) and the Food and Drug Administration (2 vacancies, 8 temporary hires out of 22 leadership positions). Atop the chart is the text "After recent turnover, many divisions lack permanent leaders."
The current Congress (the 119th) is responsible for 122 days of full or partial federal government shutdowns, the most since 1975. Since 1975, no other Congress has been responsible for more days of full or partial federal government shutdowns. The next-most in any term of Congress is the 95th Congress, with 45 days. Most Congresses have zero days of shutdowns.
This video shows, year by year, a histogram counting how many songs, by release year, are in my summer playlist from the years 2026 back to 2012. Generally, more songs are from the 2000-2026 years, but in the Summer 2026 playlist there were an equal number from the 1960s and 1970s.
A chart titled "How does Ebola spread to humans?" with an illustration showing: 1. Bats are the reservoir hosts for Ebola viruses. Infected bats can spread the virus to other animals or humans. 2. Humans can come into contact with the virus through hunting, preparing or eating the animal's meat. 3. Among humans, Ebola spreads through contact with blood, bodily fluids or the bodies of infected people who died.
A screenshot of the $11 million seat for sale on FIFA's website.
A screenshot of a county gas price map, focused on Cook County Illinois, where the average price of a gallon is $5.31, similar to the price in the rest of the area EXCEPT in Indiana, where gas prices are significantly cheaper (Indiana suspended its gas taxes, which is why).
A how-to guide that shows you how to draw an owl, with a finished drawing of an owl drawn out in its glory. Step 1: Draw some circles. Step 2: Draw the rest of the fucking owl.
Good to hear from you. Funny, you’re asking about one of the most technically complicated maps we’ve published. Let me break it down. Data sourcing. Every day I scrape AAA’s website for its average county gas prices. It’s not all on one page, and it’s not simple. The data exists on https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=TX , but how do you find it? That’s your first test. Data cleaning and munging. The AAA data comes with county names – some which align with the U.S. Census Bureau’s county names, but some that don’t. Not only that, to make a county map you need the county FIPS code, that’s a five character string (“01220” or “56299” or the like) that represents that county, it’s what most mapping software uses to know which county you’re talking about. Fortunately, I had already written a python code library that helped me attach FIPS codes to counties (i.e. “Hockley, Texas” becomes 48000). This has to be done programmatically, there are more than 3,000 county-level jurisdictions in the U.S. and there’s just no way you’d want to do that by hand. For the AAA county names that don’t match the Census Bureau’s spelling, I wrote a middleman python script to normalize those names. So now you have the data. It’s in CSV format. I’ve got another script that uploads that CSV to a public-facing web server. So now the data’s available on the web. We’ve got something. But we need a map. We built this map with d3, a popular javascript-based library for manipulating SVGs, which are the backbone of web-based data visualizations. We didn’t build this map from scratch – we’d built that map before, for this project, last year. https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/vaccine-divide/ . Anyway, that’s how it happened. Four incredibly complex steps. I’m sure you have more questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.
Names fascinate me. Data is my job. So when the U.S. Census Bureau announced it would be publishing first and last-name count data for everyone in the U.S., it felt like the Bureau was speaking directly to me. I created a searchable database where anyone can see how their first and last names rank. While auditing I found an interesting last name, Kaur, which traces back to Sikhs from India, in the Punjabi region. According to my own quick analysis, there weren’t many Kaurs living in the U.S. in 1990. But that changed: the Bureau counted 21,000 Kaurs in 2000, 48,000 in 2010, and more than 75,000 in 2020 — making Kaur one of the 500 most-common last names here. No other last name has rocketed through the country like Kaur has. Search for your name in the database, and see if it’s among the most-common names in the nation.
This map of U.S. Department of Justice shows the results of its efforts to obtain state voter rolls, with states categorized by status. Most states are in ongoing litigation, including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Fourteen states willingly provided voter rolls: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. Appeals are ongoing in California, Michigan and Oregon. Litigation was dismissed in Arizona, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
A frame from NBC Nightly News showing a county map of U.S. average gas prices with the text "Gas prices rise amid battle over Strait of Hormuz"
This map shows the change in the average gas price since the start of the Iran war in most every county-level jurisdiction in the U.S.: The Midwest has seen the most increase while Georgia and parts of Nebraska the least.
A screenshot of the terminal program, showing an ASCII interface that includes a world map showing events of interest, two panels showing what the events are (wildfires mostly, also, asteroids), and a control panel for exploring the interface.
This map shows the average gas price in most every county-level jurisdiction in the U.S., generally prices are highest in the West, then the Northeast, with exceptions for higher prices in Florida and Illinois. Prices are lowest in the very middle of the country, particularly in Oklahoma and Georgia.
This bar chart shows the cumulative amount of money wagered on Polymarket betting markets related to the Iran war, from Jan. 3 2026 to April 23. $1.5 billion was wagered in markets related to military action, $299 million on politics / government markets, $127 million on diplomacy-related markets, $37 million on economy / infrastructure markets, and $5 million on mention markets.
The moon in the foreground, a tiny Earth in the background, photo taken from a freaking spaceship with humans inside.
A glitchy computer-art drawing with black rectangular blobs on top of a red / baby blue / white mottled collection of shapes, mostly rectangular, of various sizes.
Generations, if discussed, are defined as follows: 1. Gen Z, born after 1995 2. Younger Millennials: born between 1989-1995 3. Older Millennials: born between 1978-1988 4. Gen Xers: born between 1965-1977 5. Baby Boomer: 1946-1964 6. Traditionalists: pre-1946
NBC News mapped out the web of connections between Jeffrey Epstein and those in President Trump's administrations, past and present. More than half a dozen – including the president – showed up in Epstein file dumps. This graphic shows those names: Howard Lutnick, RFK Jr., Stephen Feinberg, Mehmet Oz, John Phelan, Kevin Marsh, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon.
The cover of the 1990-something non-fiction book If At All Possible, Involve A Cow: The Book of College Pranks. By Neil Steinberg.
The new principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Ralph Abraham, appeared to shrug off the possibility that the U.S. could lose its measles elimination status. Asked on a call with reporters Tuesday whether the loss would be significant, he said, “Not really.” “We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That’s their personal freedom,” Abraham said. “I think we have to respect those communities that choose to go somewhat of a different route.”
A photo of the rear end of an red 1980s car in pretty good condition for being like 40 years old.
This chart shows which of Congress’s oldest 24 members are running for re-election (13 members), which aren’t (six members), and which are uncertain (four members). Each politician’s current age is shown, and for those running, the age they would be at the end of the term they could be re-elected for is shown. The party of each member is also shown. All of these politicians are at least 80 years old, most are younger than 84, and one is in his 90s. The uncertain politicians are, on average, the oldest, though there are three politicians at or near 88 who are running for re-election.
A pen drawing of my face.
A (mostly) county map of the U.S. showing DTaP vaccination rates among kindergarteners. Rates are lower than 95% in most of the country, and lower rates are particularly visible in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest.
This is a timeline compares the dates and time when Donald Trump posted about various public officials with the dates those individuals reported receiving threats, bomb threats, or swatting attacks: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — Trump post: Nov. 14; threats reported: Nov. 15. State Sen. Greg Goode (R-Ind.) — Post: Nov. 16; swatting and threats hours after Trump posted. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) — Post: Nov. 20; bomb threat: Nov. 21. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) — Post: Nov. 16; bomb threat: Nov. 21. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) — Post: Nov. 20; bomb threat: same day, Nov. 20. Chuck Schumer — Post: Nov. 20; bomb threat: Dec. 1. There are more.
A screenshot of my December 2024 post where I write that slop should have been the word of the year in 2024. Full text follows: I know it's out of the news cycle but if you'd have asked me what the 2024 word of the year should be I would have gone with "slop." I realize slop was a finalist (alongside demure, lore and others). Slop shoulda won
An oil pastel and digital painting, mostly deep blues and black, with splattery splots of white, kind of evokes a snow storm.
Good morning Joe, I just wanted to reach out and say that I found your article on the Christmas tree growth locations to be really neat and that I enjoyed reading it. Have a happy holiday season. Justin
This chart shows the number of new international students enrolled in U.S. higher ed each year since 2015, when 300,000 students enrolled. That was the most of any year. Generally, numbers are between 260,000 and 300,000 each year, with exceptions for the first year of the pandemic (145,000) and 2025, when an estimated 230,000 students enrolled, based on preliminary figures.
A screenshot of the source web page, with a dominant visual of a mandala-like Venn diagram with many colors and shapes swirling around in an almost ordered manner. The page is titled "7 sets Venn Diagram" and has this text on it: "Out of this seven sets Venn Diagram (who's the author?) I created my own isomorphic version (meaning that I kept the same topology) trying to balance surface areas, so each piece has a similar visual importance."
Atop this bar chart is the text "The average price of a bag of Halloween candy increased from about $9 to more than $16 in five years, an increase more than triple the rate of inflation." This chart compares the average price of a bag of Halloween candy (in dollars) each year from 2020 to 2025, showing actual prices and inflation-adjusted prices. In 2020, both prices were $9.19. In 2021, the inflation-adjusted price was $9.69, while the actual price was $9.91. In 2025, the inflation-adjusted price is $11.47 — a 25% increase — and the actual price reaches $16.39 — a 78% increase. The chart shows that while inflation-adjusted prices increase gradually, actual prices rise much faster.
A screenshot of a rudimentary tax calculator, shown for someone with a yearly pre-tax income of $83,730 (which is the latest U.S. median household income). For that income, federal income taxes in 2026 would cost someone filing as an individual $9,590 (down $279 from the year before), and would cost a married couple filing jointly $5,687 (down $103 from the year before). The standard deduction is factored into this calculation.
This chart shows which tech and AI companies are funding each other – many fund one company, which then funds another, which then funds the first one. Companies include OpenAi, Nvidia, Oracle, Meta.
A digital drawing of squares, mostly, grey white black blue and red, some textured, some overlapping, some just skinny lil' rectangles. Two larger red rectangles are top and center, overlapping (or are they) shapes surround.
Day 1 Oct. 1 The federal government shuts down. National park visitor centers close. Department of Veterans Affairs regional offices close. Social Security benefit verifications are suspended. Certain small-business loan approvals are now paused. Bureau of Labor Statistics ceases to release economic and employment data. Day 3 Oct. 3 By the end of the day, the current shutdown will have lasted longer than seven previous government shutdowns. The Senate will revote on stopgap funding measures that have previously failed.
This map, mostly a county map, shows the percentage of mostly kindergarten-age children who are vaccinated with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. A look at the map shows vaccination rates are lowest in New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Atop the map is the text "NBC News collected vaccination data from each state, analyzed it, and found 3 out of 4 counties and jurisdictions have reported declines in vaccination rates since 2019."
You've got to look into the LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT (repeat forever)
The Joshes of the world have never been this powerful, a new analysis found. The number of baby boys named Josh or Joshua was essentially nil through 1970. However, its popularity sharply increased, accounting for 1.09 percent of all newborns in 1981, peaking at 1.13 percent in 1985 and then falling off after 1989 to just 0.15 percent of newborns named Josht today. It was a great run — from 1979 to 2009, it was in the top 10 baby boy names — and this demographic wave of Joshes is cresting. This decade of hegemony means that today, your vanguard Josh is in their 40s to 50s, an age seen among six percent of U.S. governors.