Program labels on line graph to avoid line ggplot2

Question

I'm curious if there is a way to overlay labels on a line graph on ggplot2 to avoid going through the line. I've used vjust, which works in most instances, but when there is a large increase or decrease between two dates the line goes through the label making it hard to read. I will put the plot I'm currently using below and the code. In this instance, I'm wanting to move the 920; 1,467; and 1,480 off the line. I'm exporting the plot to powerpoint via the Reporters package, so I can move it manually, I was just wondering if there was a way to avoid that.

Plot:

Code:

library("ggplot2")
library("scales")

line_data <- c(276, 475, 753, 840, 931, 962, 801, 920, 1467, 1840, 1737, 1638, 1789, 1733, 1480, 1464, 1538)
year_data <- c(2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016,
               2017)

line_data_total <- as.data.frame(cbind(line_data, year_data))

limit_func <- function(x) {
  if (nchar(max(x)) == 2){
    round(max(x +5), digits = -1)
  } else if (nchar(max(x)) == 3){
    round(max(x +50), digits = -2)
  } else if (nchar(max(x)) == 4){
    round(max(x +500), digits = -3)
  }
}

ggplot(data = line_data_total, aes(x = year_data, y = line_data, group = 1)) +
  geom_line(color = "red", size = 1.2)+
  geom_point(color = "red", fill = "red", shape = 23, size = 1.75) +
  geom_text(aes(label = paste0(format(round(as.numeric(line_data), 1), nsmall = 0, big.mark = ","))),
            size = 3, fontface = "bold", vjust = -2) +
  labs(x = '', y = '') +
  expand_limits(y = c(0, limit_func(line_data_total$line_data))) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = seq(min(line_data_total$year_data), max(line_data_total$year_data), 1)) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = comma) +
  theme(panel.grid.major.x = element_blank() ,
        panel.grid.major.y = element_line( size=.1, color="light gray"),
        panel.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent"),
        plot.background = element_rect(fill = "transparent"),
        axis.text.x = element_text(face = "bold", size = 10),
        axis.text.y = element_text(face = "bold", size = 10),
        axis.ticks.y = element_blank())

Program labels on line graph to avoid line ggplot2

2 Answers