Click here to see the SAS code.
Click here to see the example.

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I got us_employment.xls from near the bottom of this page:

   http://barrdear.com/john/tag/weekly-hours/

From the following blog:

   http://barrdear.com/john/2009/02/11/perspective-comparing-recession/

I'm imitating the following graph:

   comparingrecesions_actual_peak.png


Technical Details:

I used SAS/Access to read the data directly from the spreadsheet.
I assign numbers (1-7) to each recession, and then use a user-defined format
to make them print as the text description I want - this way they'll be in the
desired order in the legend, rather than alphabetical.
I use plot markers (dots) at each data point along the line, because I think
this helps you visually tell more about the rate-of-change in the line 
(by seeing the distance between the dots), and also it allows me to 
encode html charttips, so you can hover your mouse over the dots to see
the details.
I get a little tricky with the axes & reflines to get the graph looking
exactly the way I want, but other than that it's pretty straight-forward.


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