The Atlantic has published research into how US consumer spending has changed in 2007 compared to 1947 levels. The results are visualized through two interactive infographics, which tell the story of we’re now spending less on the production of tangible goods and more on services such as health care, education and recreation.

From the article:

Taking 1967 as our starting point, 30% of the cost of the things we consumed that year went to manufacturing them; by 2007, that figure had fallen to 16%. In contrast, what we spent on business services over the same period jumped from 12% to 26%. That’s because baked into the price of everything we buy is the rising cost of advertising, accounting, legal services, insurance, real estate, consulting, and the like—jobs performed by the high-wage workers of our modern economy.

Click on the images for the full interactive infographics.

Change in spending over the past 40 years

The infographics were created by Kiss Me I’m Polish, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce and Census Bureau and noted the challenge in converting the complex datasets into a high level overview:

The data set we were provided was full of complexities – and we wanted our illustration to reflect those meticulous details without becoming visually overwhelming. So we created simple charts and blasted them with a hefty dose of playful and comprehensive imagery.

(via The Atlantic)