I guess that between (e.g.) "5,000,000" being too gaudy and the public's near-total aversion to scientific notation, we wound up with y-axis oddities such as "5,000 thousand", where the "thousand" is only implied? Things are in such flux right now that our measurement timescales aren't capturing what's going on.
This is Daily Shot, a subscription service that I used to get through the WSJ. I now pay $100 a year for 150pp of graphs every goddamn morning. The sorts of people who pay $100 a year for 150pp of graphs every goddamn morning do everything per thousand. Because everything they buy is per hundred and even they think that 50,000 (00) is retarded.
You’re right that there’s a public aversion to it. But business speak isn’t very conducive to scientific notation either, you speak to the base unit you typically produce/measure in as that’s what’s more “meaningful”. Source: kleinbl00 but also literally me, who uses the “MM” abbreviation on axis more often than I would care to admit.