First chart's huge dropoff is an artifact of choosing a yrange of 21-41 instead of 0-100. It's a common deficit of charts created under motivated cognition.
The US has been in recession 9 of the last 10 years.
The consistent decline is the story (at least as the author is telling it). The slope is not up and to the right, just the opposite. The concern you raise about the labeling of the Y axis is noted, but hardly a concern for anyone paying attention.