Hide Axis labels in pgfplots – problem with the xticklabels=\empty

Question

I followed the conversation at Hide tick numbers in a TikZ/PGF axis environment.. However, the xticklabels=\empty appears to not cover the exponential part. Here is the code.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.8}
\begin{document}

\begin{figure} \centering
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \begin{axis}[
    legend columns=-1,
    legend style={at={(1,0)},anchor=south east},
    width=.8\textwidth, 
    height=\textwidth,
    bar width=8pt,
    xmin=0,
    xmax=17000,
    xbar,
    tickwidth         = 0pt,
    ytick             = data,
    xticklabels=\empty,
    %enlargelimits=auto,
    %enlarge y limits  = 0.01,
    enlarge x limits  = 0.02,
    symbolic y coords = {Animals, Vegetables, Food products, Minerals, Fuel, Chemicals, Plastic and rubber, Leather, Wood, Textiles},
    nodes near coords
  ]
  \addplot coordinates {(863.9,Animals) (3461.3,Vegetables) (913.8,Food products) (527.1,Minerals) (372.1,Fuel) (386.3,Chemicals) (392.7,Plastic and rubber) (860.5,Leather) (90,Wood) (13655.1,Textiles)};
  \addplot coordinates {(17.8,Animals) (1457.8,Vegetables) (112.5,Food products) (71.9,Minerals) (2457.2,Fuel) (206.8,Chemicals) (402.2,Plastic and rubber) (51.1,Leather) (35.9,Wood) (1940.6,Texti
les)};
  \legend{Exporters, Importers}
  \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{Export across industrial sectors} \label{f:sectors}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Instead of xticklabels=\empty, use xtick=\empty, that removes all ticks, not just the textual labels belonging to the ticks. The scale factor will also disappear. If you're not adding grid lines, I would recommend this.

If you are going to add grid lines then you need the ticks, so use scaled x ticks=false to just remove the scale factor.

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Note that with xticklabels=\empty, the nodes for those labels are still present, but empty, so they take up space, and effectively add whitespace to the diagram. For example if you have xticklabels=\empty, scaled x ticks=false, xticklabel style={draw} you can see that the nodes are there:

But with xtick=\empty the nodes are not there, and there is less whitespace between the caption and the axis box: