For week 44 of #MakeoverMonday Eva selected a Daily Telegraph article mapping the countries with the most public holidays. Nice map – although as ever with filled maps there are data points that get a little lost (the smaller countries). The lists work well to make up for this, although they’re pretty basic and unexciting.

The dataset was quite challenging this week - broader than the original article, lots of variation and some data quality issues. I’ve decided to focus on a specific public holiday, labour day, because it was easier to hone that subset of the data for analysis and visualising. Labour day is also reasonably prevalent and it’s roots are a great reminder to us all about striking a suitable work-life balance!

First up I wanted to map those countries celebrating Labour Day to get a feel for how much of the world does celebrate the day. An image and large KPI-style number lend a bit of focus here. The rest of my makeover focusses on drilling into the variation in when the world celebrates the day – not everyone celebrates it at the same time or for the same duration. For example I was really surprised to see that China counts a weekend as part of it’s celebrations.

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The viz is also available on Tableau Public where you get a little more hover over – e.g. to see what dates each country celebrates and for how long.