How to best graph the Beveridge curve, relating the vacancy rate in jobs to the unemployment rate?

Jonathan Robinson writes:

I’m a survey researcher who mostly does political work, but I also have a strong interest in economics. I have a question about this graph you commonly see in the economics literature. It is of a concept called the Beveridge Curve [recently in the newspaper here]. It is one of the more interesting concepts in labor economics, relating the vacancy rate in jobs to the unemployment rate. A good primer is here.

However, despite being one of the more interesting concepts in economics, the way it is displayed visually is nothing short of atrocious:

These graphs are nothing short of unreadable and pretty much the standard (Brad Delong has linked to this graph above and it can appear like this in publication as well). I’ve only really seen one representation of the curve that is more clear than this and it is at this link:

Do you have any ideas of any way of making these graphs more readable? I like the second Cleveland Fed graph, but I hardly think its ideal, as it ignores close to 50% of the data.

I don’t actually think these graphs are so bad—I assume that they’re readable to the specialists who matter—so I have no particular suggestions. But I’ll throw this out there for the rest of you.

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