Channeling the Teenagers of Christmas Past

In my last post, I presented the following chart that showed the fraction of the civilian noninstitutional population aged 16 to 19 who are employed.


Click to enlarge.

It is disturbing to me that we can't and quite possibly won't ever get back to the trend channel. I therefore propose a desperate solution. If the teenagers can't come to the mountain, then let's bring the mountain to the teenagers! All we need to do is come up with an alternate trend channel. Right?


Click to enlarge.

Still not back to the trend channel? What a bummer! Have no fear though. We are guaranteed to get back to this one at some point. Just need to be patient. At the very least, the percentage of those aged 16 to 19 with a job will hit the hard floor of 0% and fall no further (which is in sharp contrast to the long-term trend itself). Call me a mathematical optimist!

As a side note, do all teenagers now live in Detroit? Seriously. Other than potentially obvious long-term structural employment issues, what's up with that long-term parabolic trend failure? Sigh.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart