Hello, and welcome to our final newsletter of the year!
2022 In 5 Charts
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an international inflation surge, Roe v. Wade, crypto contagion, a new monarch in the UK, prolonged pandemic effects and much more — it's fair to say that 2022 has been one for the history books.
And we’ve been here crunching the numbers, digesting the data, and charting throughout. Before we break for the holidays, we’d like to say a deep thank you to all of our readers. Without you opening (21 million times this year!), clicking and writing to us, we wouldn’t get to chart away to our heart’s content.
And so, with 306 new charts to choose from, we whittled it down to just 5 to tell the Story of 2022.
P.S. Every in-story link will take you straight to one of our charts on the topic.
The "I" word
Even before the final chapters of 2021 had been written, one of the main topics for 2022 — inflation — was already emerging. As the impact of pandemic stimulus checks set in, supply-chain bottlenecks emerged and the geopolitical landscape looked increasingly uncertain, prices across nearly every industry hit record levels.
By January, gas was topping inflation tables, with prices at the pump up nearly 50% year-on-year. And then came the news that Russia, after months of posturing, had invaded Ukraine.
Sanctions where it hurts
Russia’s offensive shook the world as Putin’s campaign brought death and destruction to Ukraine — leading millions to flee the country and seek refuge westward in neighboring European countries.
Political retribution toward Russia was calculated, but arguably slow. Negotiations were long, but everyone knew, given Russia’s place as the third largest supplier of oil globally, that sanctions targeting Russian fossil fuel exports would hurt its economy most.
The issue was, and still is, Europe’s heavy reliance on Russian gas and oil, which accounts for over 40% of the European Union’s gas imports, and more than a quarter of petroleum imports. In the end, it took until December 5th for the 27 nations of the EU and the G7 to implement a $60-a-barrel price cap for Russian oil.
As oil prices spiked, and the cost to fill a car hit a new record nearly every week, Biden decided to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to alleviate some of the pain, bringing the reserve down to its lowest point since 1984.
Pull the big red lever
As energy inflation was exported around the world, central bankers eventually pulled the major lever at their disposal, with the word "transitory" leaving speeches almost as quickly as it arrived. In the US, the Federal Reserve acted at an almost unprecedented pace, hiking rates to signal their strong resolve to get double-digit inflation under control.
One hike to rule them all
The impact of the hikes is hard to overstate, rippling throughout almost every aspect of the economy. From strengthening the US dollar, fueling some of the sharpest mortgage rate rises for 35 years, and of course humbling the stock market — where investors had been riding a 21-month bull market — rate hikes likely had more of an impact on your wallet than almost anything else this year.
The good news is that, with inflation showing signs of cooling, 2023 may see less-aggressive central bank moves around the world.
The energy exception
As alluded to in the previous story, 2022 was a tough year for the stock market. As of Dec 15th, the S&P 500 Index was down 17% this year — with 338 of its ~500 members losing ground. The exceptions, of course, were energy companies — many of which raked in record profits during the year.
The tech and media sectors in particular had something of a reckoning. PayPal and Tesla lost more than 50% in value, while countless others — including Amazon, Alphabet and Disney — shed more than a third of their value.
As public market malaise fed through to private markets, VCs became cautious, despite a record amount of dry powder sitting on the sidelines. As startups struggled with funding, finances were squeezed — bringing the end of the hiring spree for big tech and more substantial layoffs at startups.
Socialites
With tech stocks souring and Tesla shares tumbling, Elon Musk’s $44bn Twitter takeover offer in April looked more-regrettable with each month that passed, with Musk recently dethroned as the world’s richest person.
Eventually, the 6-month+ will-they-won’t-they saga concluded, and Musk completed his acquisition in October. It is, of course, hard to say exactly what will happen with Musk as Chief Twit, but with sharp staffing cuts, an advertiser exodus, and a subscription-focused revamp of the verification system, it’s clear that a shifting business model is afoot.
Beyond Twitter, it’s been a busy year across social media — the fickle industry we all love to hate — where platforms come and go at breakneck speed.
Mark Zuckerberg has been betting big on his Metaverse ambitions... and finding it hard going. Meta has shed some ~$800bn in value since its market cap. peak — suggesting many aren’t quite as invested in Mark's new online world.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s been doing, well, what TikTok does — getting bigger and bigger. Even as regulation threatens to slow the Chinese-owned platform’s meteoric rise, TikTok has been hitting huge revenue milestones at unparalleled pace this year. In a completely unrelated set of events, every other social platform has decided that short-form vertical video is a really cool idea.
TheRealTRUTH
It’s also been a big year for socials looking to take things back to basics, like BeReal. The app invites users to shun the carefully-crafted style that other platforms encourage, which proved to be a huge hit this year. Donald Trump's TRUTH Social also launched to much fanfare, though the platform is yet to breakout beyond the ex-president's core fanbase.
End credits
As we devote more time to social media and short-form content, smaller screens are beating big ones in the battle for our attention, with the box office business stumbling at the start, and throughout, the year.
There were, however, some standout success stories. Horror’s still a hit, for instance, and Marvel, obviously, remains marvelous. But the true star of the show this year has been sequelitis, which has gripped the silver screen perhaps like never before.
Following up
Hollywood’s been world-building like nobody’s business this year, with each of the top ten highest-grossing opening days secured by sequels, spin-offs, or reboots, and it’s not just the usual franchise suspects like DC and Marvel that are spewing out second parts either.
Top Gun: Maverick soared to become the highest-grossing movie of 2022, maybe only until millions flock to watch another sequel, Avatar 2, this weekend. Maverick, which became the first film to take the most for the Memorial and Labor Day weekends in a single year, was praised for interrupting superhero dominance at the box office, although it remains itself, of course, a sequel.
There were, naturally, hundreds of other narratives, stories and threads to pull on.
• Work: Microsoft noticed the triple peak workday, the rise of hybrid work continued and remote work became a contested topic between employers and employees.
• Abortion procedures were in the headlines as Roe v. Wade was overturned.
• The streaming wars heated up as Netflix's growth slowed and Disney kept up their pace.
• China stuck to its zero-covid measures for much of the year, with substantial economic and societal impact.
• The UK saw the fall of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. The country also mourned the passing of its longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Wikipedia traffic reveals just how widely-read the news of her passing was.
• Qatar spent big to host the World Cup.
Time to reflect
At Chartr, we strongly believe in the power of data storytelling, though we recognize that it’s at its weakest when discussing the most human stories. A bar chart showing the flight of Ukrainian refugees westward, for example, can feel reductive and a trendline of abortion rates doesn't convey the true weight of the topic, or do justice to individual stories. In those cases, we salute our friends and peers in the wider journalistic world telling the stories that — in truth — matter most.
For us though, since starting in 2019, we’re proud to say that we’re working hard to ensure that each year is better than the last. Next year, with any luck, we’ll be publishing 500+ charts and every single one will be in your inbox, for free.
