Computer RAM Memory Prices 2007-2018

The prices for memory used in desktop computers has been relatively high for the past couple years and is now starting to come down.   I was curious what the longer term trend has been. 

I made a chart showing the prices of computer memory over the period 2007 to 2018.   Prices are in $ / MB.

Chart :

Note that the specific memory technology and speed has changed over time so the memory is also faster.    e.g. back in 2007 you might be buying DDR2-800 and today it is probably DDR4-2666

Data source : https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm 
'copyright 2001, 2017, 2018 John C. McCallum 
You can use the material here. Please acknowledge the source.'


--This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Effective Federal Funds Rate for 60+ Years (1954 to 2017)

The St. Louis Fed's FRED database has historical info on the federal funds rate

Wiki says that "In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight, on an uncollateralized basis."

Here's the graphic - click the picture for a full size version:

(source St. Louis Fed )

Seemed to me the trend was gradually going up and then peaking around 1980 then going down.   I used Excel to plot a (polynomial) trend line :

-

105 Years of Text Book Cost Inflation

(click image for full size)

I found the attached price list for text books in an old textbook from 1909.    That was 105 years ago.   I thought it was interesting.   Textbooks back then were as little as 25¢   The average of the numbers listed there is $1.17.

Textbooks cost a little bit more today.   I found in an article from Kiplinger that the new textbooks were $72 average last year.   I'm not too confident in that number as it seems lowish to me and I don't' see a source cited but I think $72 isn't unbelievable.  

If textbooks were $1.17 in 1909 and $72 today then that equates to a 4% annual increase rate over 105 years.    The inflation data from CPI only seems to go to 1913 but thats fairly close to 1909 for my purposes so I'll call it good enough.     Inflation from 1913 to 2014 was 3.2% per year cumulative.

4% versus 3.2% doesn't seem like a big difference but over 100 years that matters a lot.    If textbooks had only gone up 3.2% over 105 years then they'd be around $32 today but they're more than double that. 

Note : This is mostly anecdotal information for fun.  I only have one list of prices from one publisher and all the books are in the science field. 

--

Work Stoppages from 1947 to 2013 - Nobody Goes On Strike Anymore

From the BLS recent information on Major Work Stoppages in 2013  

(click for full size)

You can see that the frequency of strikes was huge back in the 50's and 60's compared to nowadays.   And these are only the large strikes of 1000 or more people that lasted at least a full work shift or longer.    The # of stoppages peaked at 470 in 1952 and hit a low of just 5 in 2009.    In 2013 there were 13 strikes.   Every day or so there was a large strike back in the 50's but now its only about once a month.

--

What Percent of People Historically Receive a Refund versus Owe Taxes

Most people get a refund on their taxes in any given year.    Generally speaking around 80% of people filing taxes get a refund.

I found the historical IRS tax data going back to 1950 showing who gets refunds versus who owes taxes.

Here's a chart of the trend from 1950 to 2011 from the current IRS data set :

I am sure there are various things that drive the longer term trends.    IRS tax withholding processes have undoubtedly evolved over the decades.   Things like more dual income households may impact it as well.    The introduction of earned income tax credits may have increased refund rates as well.

The green line indicates people who get neither a refund nor owe money.  I'm assuming thats mostly for people who had no money withheld but owed nothing.   Maybe people like retirees on social security and minimal other income.

--

Total US Auto Loan Debt From 1943 to 2013, real, nominal and % of GDP

Haven't you always wanted to know how much the citizens of the USA owed in auto loan debts in 1978?   Well today's your lucky day!   The answer is approximately $83.5 billion. Can't get enough of historical debt figures?   Well then read on!

I got the data off the Federal Reserve site : Consumer Credit - G.19 - memo - historical data
The inflation data is from the BLS CPI.   To make it a little simpler I just pulled out data for January of each year.    I assume that there aren't any major changes month to month really and if so they're likely seasonal in nature.

Here's the graphic :

(click image for full size)

Our auto loan debt has gone up pretty steadily over the past 70 years.    Even when adjusted for inflation the values have climbed pretty quickly.

In hindsight it seems pretty clear that the "Great Auto Loan Bubble"burst in 2005.   I mean just look at that red line up there!   pop!    I'm glad we all made it through that one.

I think its also always good to look at large financial figures like this as they relate to GDP.   So I got the US historical GDP figures from the BEA and plotted auto loan as % of GDP below.

There the change is less drastic as we bought more cars as our economy grew.  But still auto loan balances grew over the decades.   In the 1950's we were around 3% and then it peaked in now we're just at 4.9%.

--

Income by Select Occupations over Time

A little while  ago I watched a documentary on cable called American Teacher.   The documentary was about teaching in American and was generally pro-teacher.  But the point that I found interesting was a chart they showed in the middle of the film that compared teacher wages to other professions.   They claimed that real estate brokers and lawyers had significantly higher income growth over the period than teachers.   The numbers seemed a bit off to me.

I thought that wage trends over time for different occupations would be an interesting topic to explore.   I know the general income for my occupation where I live has gone up abut 50% in the past 15 years.   On the other hand my fathers occupation has been virtually flat for the past 15 years in his home city (though he's now retired). 

I set out to find income figures per specific occupations over several decade period.  It was pretty hard to find good consistent data breaking down income by occupations.    I looked all over the Census site to find a good list but it seemed the data they collect changes a bit over time.    I was at least able to find a hodge podge of tables that give me numbers for some common occupations.  

I couldn't find consistent data and some of its not really comparing equal information.  But I think its close enough to get an OK idea of wages for the occupations in question.  
Data for 1978, 1983, 1987 and 1992 are from the Census Consumer Income reports.  Annoyingly they seem to only give income for males or females but not the combined population so I'm using the numbers for males.   The 1999 data is from the Census page.  2005 is from BLS OES and 2012 is the current BLS OES.    For BLS data I and used hourly wage x 2000 wages as an estimate of annual median wages.   For the first few data points the figure for 'lawyer' is actually including judges but the later years is lawyers only, so that means that the income figures for the lawyer category are actually measuring different set of people.    For engineers I first had a general category for all engineers but then they split them up so I picked just electrical engineers which seem to be closer to the middle of income for engineer specialties.   The teacher incomes are annual averages in the later years because they didn't have median hourly rates.   Teachers are almost all paid salary and theres little variation in wages.

So let me be clear, the charts and data are pretty flawed due to my mix matched data sources with inconsistent numbers.  Almost makes this exercise futile.

Here is the income over time from 1978 to 2012 :

(click image for full size)

And here is how the income for each occupation grew from 1983 to 2012:

(click image for full size)

I only had a few data points from 1978 so I didn't include that year in this chart.

It just so happened that the occupations I sampled all grew faster than wages in general.  I suspect thats because many many low skill service jobs make up a larger portion of the employment and those wages haven't grown as fast compared to the jobs I sampled which are mostly skilled professional occupations.

Carpenter, Nurses and teachers grew the fastest.  However part of that may be a fault in my methodology of pulling together miss matched sources.    Both occupations had high jumps from 1999 to 2005 and thats when I went from a census table to the BLS figures.   Median hourly  wages x 2000 may not be very accurate approximation for median annual income for some occupations versus others.   For example carpenters tend to have higher unemployment during economic downturns and may have seasonal unemployment due to weather.   School teacher wages jumped 50% in my chart from 1999 to 2005 and I'm pretty sure thats not right and must be the difference in what I'm reporting from the different sources.   Lawyers didn't grow as fast as other professions but I started out with data for lawyers and judges and then ended up with only lawyers and I'm sure judges pulled up the initial numbers so makes it look like they haven't grown as fast.

Again, I have to point out that the numbers are not very great.   If I can find better data I'll revisit the topic.  For now we've got a set of data with some flaws.



-- This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Nationwide Rental Vacancy Rate 1956 to 2012

The Census Current Population Survey / Housing Vacancy Survey tracks rental vacancies.

Using their time series / trend chart function on the Census page you can pull data.   I got the following image showing rental vacancy rates nationally from 1956 to 2012:

(click image for larger size)

I don't know anything much about what drives rental vacancy rates at the national level.    I assume part of it is building of new housing units versus growth of population.

Interestingly the national rental vacancy rate was relatively high even during the housing real estate boom.  Vacancies were over 10% back in 2003 and 2004.   It could be vacancies in rentals where high during the real estate boom due to individuals moving into single family houses instead.  

 --

Older College Students and the Labor Force Participation Rate

Last time on the topic, I took a look at the impact of higher college enrollment rates for people age 18-24 versus the labor force participation rate.    It seemed to me that higher college enrollment had  a pretty direct and obvious impact on labor force participation.    But what about people over 25 years old?    Are there also more older people going to college and is that impacting the labor force too?

Again I got the data from the census and the BLS.

I decided to lump all ages over 25 years together.  The Census data has data for ages 25 to 34 and for 35 and over.

Here is the % of the population for ages over 25 who were enrolled in college:

As you can see there is a small increase over the past 30 years.  The change for women is more visible.  In 1980 there was 3.1% of the women population over age 25 in college and by 2009 it had grown to 4.4%.  For men the differences are petty minimal and enrollments have fluctuated a little ranging from 2.7% to 3.1%.

Here is the comparison of the % of the population in college versus the % in the labor force for men:

And for women:

 For men the college enrollment is almost flat so its hard to see that there would be any impact to the labor force.   For women both rates are up over the decades. 

Looking at those two charts above I don't see a significant relationship between the % college attendance and the labor force participation rate.

 However the total population over age 25 has a lot of people even including those over age 65.   Its a pretty broad group.  

Lets look a little closer at the group age 25 to 34.   That age range is a lot more likely to be in college in general either in graduate or professional programs, returning to school or first starting college at a later age.

First lets compare the % of population in college versus in the labor force for men age 25 to 34:

And next the women age 25 to 34:

Just looking at those graphics and focusing on the change from year 2000 to 2009 it does seem to me that there was a notable increase in college enrollment.  Men were up 2% and women up almost 3%.    These are more notable increases.   At the same time mens labor force was down 3% and womens down 1%. 

For the age group of 25 to 34 year olds we could assume then that increased college attendance was a significant reason for reduced labor force participation.

Lastly lets look at the age group over 35 years old.   Much smaller % of that group goes to college.

First the men over 35 :

And then women over 35 :

Here I see little differences in the college attendance % rates.  The % of the population over age 35 in college has been almost flat for the past 30 years for both men and women.  

--

College Enrollment versus Labor Force Participation for Age 18 to 24

I've been discussing labor force participation lately.   My first look at the recent trends in labor force participation was only for ages 25 to 54.  I excluded people age 18 to 24 with the belief that people in that age range are going to college more which skews their labor force participation rates.

I got figures for college enrollment by age at the Census site.  The census has data by decade going back to 1980 and the latest numbers are from 2009 so I'll look at dates for 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2009.      I used a BLS database lookup to find the total population and the labor force size.   Add it all up and I get the charts below:

First lets look at men age 18 to 24.

Those lines seem to slope in the opposite directions at about the same rate.    In fact from 1980 to 2009 the percent of population in college was up 14% and the labor force rate was down 12%.  

Now the women age 18 to 24.

Women went to college at a faster rate.   They went from 24% to 45% an in crease of 21% of the population.   At the same time their labor force rate waffled and dropped and is down 3% net.    The trend here is a little different than for men as the college enrollment rate is up a lot but the labor force is less changed.

You might have noticed in the two charts above that if you add the college attendance rate and the labor force participation rates that you get more than 100%.    We can assume that is due to overlap with a certain group that both attends college and works.

If we add the percent in college and the percent in the labor force per gender then we get the following trends:

As you can see there, the total percent of the population working and/or in college has just recently about hit parity between the sexes.

For men I would conclude that the increased college attendance and decreased labor force are equal and opposite.    More men are going to college than joining the workforce.    On the other hand for women I'd say that rather than joining the workforce at a higher rate as is the general trend for women, more young women are instead going to college at even higher rates than their male peers.


--

The Corvette Affordability Index

Not too long ago I was watching Motor Week on PBS.   They reviewed a new 2013 Camaro 1LE model.   The new Camaro is an example of what I'd consider a revival of the quintessential American Muscle Car.     The cost of the model is $37,035.   That seemed quite reasonable for a car with 426 horses that will go 0 to 60 in just 4.5s.  Thats a lot faster than the original muscle cars of the 60's and 70's.

I wondered to myself: if todays muscle cars are more or less affordable than the originals?    I remembered that the old cars in the 60's and 70's usually sold for "a few thousand dollars".   For example, the 1970 Plymouth Cuda had a base price of $3,400.   But how does that compare to wages back then versus the $37,035 cost of that new Camaro and todays wages.   Was it more or less easy to buy an American sports car with a typical income?

I thought it would be interesting to look at the base price of a muscle car and compare it to median wages and see how affordable such a car would be over time compared to typical incomes.    The Chevy Corvette has been in production continuously since 1953.     I can use the Corvette then as an example of an American sports car and see how its prices compare to wages over a long period.

The Corvette Affordability Index (CAI) is the base price of a Corvette Coupe as a percentage of median household income.

Here is the Corvette Affordability Index from 1967 to 2011 :

The CAI has been in the 100-110% range for around 30 years now dating back to the 1980's.   Before that back in the 60's and 70's it was closer to 75% level.  
To create the index I used the base MSRP of a Corvette coupe.   Note theres a break at 1983, as they didn't list the price for that year.  I got the numbers out of the CorvetteForum website.   A user posted the numbers there and cited 'Corvette Sports Car Superstar, by the auto editors of Consumer Guide.' as the source for most of the figures.   Here are the base prices for Corvettes going all the way back to 1953:

Now lets compare that to new vehicle price index from the BLS.    I previously talked about the new car price index from the BLS in an older article.

The long term price trend of Corvettes is similar pattern to the new price index from the CPI.


One last graphic shows the MSRP of Corvettes adjusted for 2011 dollars :

--

Average Hours Worked per Employed Person 1970 to 2011

Below is a graph showing the average number of hours worked  annually per employed person.   I got the data from the Federal Reserve bank of St. Louis' FRED system.

I presume this is a combination of people who work full time and part time and a reflection of the total hours that full time hourly and salary people work.  Hard to say if this means more part time jobs or fewer long hours by full time workers.   But in any case as a nation the average person is working fewer hours.


--

Federal Taxes by Source 1934 to 2011

Today less than half of the federal tax revenue comes from individual income taxes.   Nearly a third of the revenue is from the payroll taxes for social security and medicare.   The rest is a combination of corporate, excise and other taxes.

I got the historical data from the White House Budget pages.   I pulled the numbers from the 2013 fiscal year budget and only used up to 2011 which is the latest full year of data (not including future estimates).

Here's how the tax revenues look going all the way back to 1934:

I'll also break it into the first few decades :

And the most recent 50 years :

I'll also show it in percentages of the whole :

Now all the numbers above are actual dollar values before looking at inflation or anything.   TO put these figures into perspective of the changing economy, lets look at the tax sources as percentage of GDP :

Putting it in relation to GDP makes the changes of the past 70 years a lot less dramatic.  

--

Top Marginal Income Tax rates For Select Incomes over Time

The top marginal income taxes used to be a lot higher.   During WWII the top marginal rate in the USA was 94%.   Today the top marginal tax rate is 35%.     However to hit that top 94% rate in 1945 you'd have to make $200,000 taxable income which is equivalent about $2,500,000 in todays dollars.   Only the very rich were paying that kind of tax rate back then.   For most of us taxable income of $25,000 to $250,000 range is more common.  So to get a better comparison of marginal tax rates over the years lets look at the top marginal tax rate at inflation adjusted rates for incomes in that range.

I'm looking at just the taxable income for a married couple.    I got the historical marginal rates from the Tax Foundation,  for recent tax rates I used the tax brackets at moneychip site and I adjusted the figures for inflation with the BLS inflation calculator.

Here's how it looks in graphic :

Here's the data :

	$25k	$50k	$100k	$250k
1930	1.50%	1.50%	3%	9%
1940	4%	4%	8%	19%
1945	23%	25%	33%	56%
1950	22%	26%	38%	62%
1960	20%	22%	30%	47%
1970	19%	22%	28%	48%
1980	18%	24%	43%	59%
1990	15%	15%	28%	33%
2000	15%	15%	28%	36%
2010	15%	15%	25%	33%
2012	15%	15%	25%	33%

 As you can see theres less variation in the marginal rate for the lower/middle income groups.   For inflation adjusted income levels of $25,000 or $50,000 the marginal rate has varied from 20-26% in the 40's to 60's down to 15% for the past couple decades.   The higher income group with >$250k of taxable income has seen rates vary a lot more.   In the 50's their marginal rate was 62% and today its down to 33%.   Before WWII the income tax rates were much lower all across the board.

Keep in mind that I am ignoring deductions and exemptions which would of course impact all this as well.  

--

Average Miles Driven, Total Miles, Number of Drivers : 1980 to 2010

The other day I shared a table showing the average number of miles driven by age and sex.   Now lets look at the average miles driven over the past 3 decades.

I got the data from the U.S. Dept. of Transportation Federal Highway Administration's highway statistics series for 2010   Specifically the number of drivers and the total miles driven.

Here is the chart for the total number of miles and the number of drivers over time :

And from those 2 figures we can derive the average number of miles driven per driver. 

--

Social Security Disability Beneficiaries : 1957 to 2011

I've heard people say that 'millions' of people have signed up for Social Security disability since the recession and this is one way people have opted out of the workforce.  

I wrote about the 2% drop in the labor force last month.   One point I touched on then was the number of disabled workers and how that impacted labor participation   But when I did that i looked at the BLS data on disabled workers.    However thats not the same as the number of people receiving disability benefits from the Social Security administration.

I found data for the number of beneficiaries receiving Social Security disability from 1957 to 2011 in the Table 5.A17 of the 2012 Annual Statistical Supplement for Social Security

Here are the numbers over time :

To see the percent of workers on SS disability versus the adult population I calculated the SS disability beneficiary # / Civilian noninstitutional population over 16 years old.   I got the population from the BLS labor force statistics I think this is a better way to look at the figures since it is in relation to the adult working age population.

In general it seems the upward trend has been ongoing for around 20 years.   Theres no big spike in the numbers around the recession.

I find the long term trend interesting.   The numbers went up progressively from the 50's to the 70's.   But then they dropped and slowed considerably from around 1975 to 1990.    Then in the 1990's and onward they started growing again at the same rate they were growing in the 50's and 60's.   I have no idea what caused the long term changes in the growth rate.   I would suspect there were changes in policy in the 70's or 80's or maybe changes in demographics impacted it as well.

- -

Private vs Government vs Non Working Population : 1962 vs 2012

I recently looked at the change in government employment over the years.   I thought it would be interesting to look at a 'now and then' comparison of the labor force from 50 years ago in 1962 versus today.  

Most of the employment numbers I got from the BLS CES page.  I used the 'multi-screen data search' to get historical figures for government and non-government employment.   I also used the numbers for uniformed military and Dept. of Defense civilian employees from my previous article and then added those to get the total military personnel.   I used BLS site to find the labor force participation rate for people over 65 then figured the number of retired workers by multiplying the labor force participation rate of people over 65 versus the total population over 65.   The total population, and how it breaks down by age is off Census sites including the American factfinder.   I used 2010 numbers for age % and I used the 2007 military numbers.   So both those details are a bit off from the actual 2012 numbers but close enough.

First off lets look at who works and who doesn't:

and

Wow, less than 1/3 of the population worked back in 1962.    A lot of that is due to more 1 job families then as well as more children.   A lot more people work now.

Lets further break down the entire population including sub sections of working and non working populations :

and

Private employment and government employment have increased but the military employment has dropped.   Among the non working population there are fewer children and more retirees and fewer portion of the adult age population is non working.

If we just look at the working population and then break down the government versus private jobs :

and

More of the labor force is in private industry and we have fewer people in the military.

Breaking down the sub sections of government employment further :

and

Military dropped significantly from '62 till today.  The USPS was cut in half.  Federal jobs excluding military and USPS dropped a little.  Other state government jobs were flat as a % of all jobs and local government jobs were up a bit.   Educational jobs at the state and local level both grew significantly.   In 1962 we had about 2.9 million jobs in state / local education representing 5.1% of the workforce but by 2012 it had grown to 10.2 million workers which is 7.7% of all jobs.   This bit of information seems noteworthy and I will likely dig into this further in another article to try and see exactly why there are so many more education jobs.

Lastly for reference, here are a couple tables giving the raw figures I used for actual employment numbers (in thousands)

	1962	2012
all employees	54891	132461
all with military	57731	133888
Military	3910	2078
non government	46040	110470
government	7781	21340
non government	47110	111121
dod	1070	651
fed	2433	2831
USPS	587.5	619.3
fed non USPS	775.5	1560.7
state	1624	5052
state edu	487.8	2389.9
state other	1136.2	2662.1
local	4794	14108
local edu	2470.6	7858.4
local other	2323.4	6249.6

and

	1962	2012
total population	186537	312708
Military	3910	2078
non government	46040	110470
government	7781	21340
non working	128806	178820
under 15	57904	61916
over 65	17457	40965
% work >65	19.4%	18.40%
retired	14070	33427
kids	57904	61916
non worker adults	56832	83477
Military	3910	2078
private industry	46040	110470
government	7781	21340
Workers	57731	133888
Non Workers	128806	178820

--

Federal Government Employees by Group, Military vs Civilian - 1962 to 2007

The other day I talked about how federal government and government employment in general has been on the decline recently.   I showed the trend for federal, state and local government jobs from the BLS data.   At the time I wasn't sure how much of the federal government employees were related to the military.  I figured at least some were given the big jumps in employment around the 40's and 60's.  

I found numbers for federal government employees broken down into some categories.   The more recent budgets only show numbers starting in 1981.   The 2009 budget figures have the data going back to 1962.  I wanted a longer history so I am using the 2009 budget data.

First here is the federal government employment split into different categories:

The 'Military' section is for uniformed military while the 'DoD' is for civilian employment within the Dept. of Defense.  

Here's another look at the same data that make it a little easier to see the number of employees and trends for each category :

As you can see there the size of our uniformed military is mostly the cause of decrease in total federal employment.   The other lines generally trend flat over the decades (more or less).   I'll also point out that from 1962 to 2007 the population of the U.S. increased about 60% from around about 189M to 304M.

Lastly I broke it into military & DoD versus all the other employees:

This graph more clearly illustrates the impact that total military related employment has had on the general trend in federal government employee total.

Here is a table with select years :

Year	Military	Leg/Jud	DoD	Exec	USPS	SUM
1962	2840	30	1070	827	589	5354
1965	2687	32	1034	867	595	5215
1970	3104	38	1219	983	741	6085
1975	2164	49	1042	1107	699	5061
1980	2090	55	960	1201	660	4965
1985	2190	58	1107	1145	756	5256
1990	2106	61	1034	1216	817	5234
1995	1555	62	802	1210	846	4475
2000	1426	63	651	1127	861	4129
2005	1436	65	649	1224	764	4138
2006	1432	63	653	1227	757	4133
2007	1427	63	651	1237	748	4127

Those numbers are in thousands.

--

Teenage Labor Participation rates Male versus Female

If you're not sick of hearing about the teen labor force participation rate I've got yet more today.   I figured it would be relevant to look at the participation rate for teenagers (age 16-19 years) between males and females.    As a whole teenagers participation rate went up in the 60's and 70's then have been declining since the 80's.   In the entire labor force men have been working less and women have been working more.   The labor participation rate of women went up significantly from the 60's to now.    They went up from under 40% to almost 60%.   Women worked more and more from the 60's to the 90's or so when it flattened off and lately in the past decade its started to drop.  But at the same time the % of men who work has declined gradually for the past 50 years and has dropped from 80%'s to 70%'s.   But the overall labor force was on an upward trend then flattened off and is reflecting the trend for women.    Do teenagers follow that same pattern?

I got the data from the BLS A1 tables again.   I had to do some math to get the numbers for male and female teenagers.    I simply subtracted the over 20 year old numbers from the over 16 year old numbers to get the 16-19 year numbers.

As you can see both male and female teenagers had the general pattern of labor force participation.   Both sexes had increased rates in the 60's and 70's and then have had decreasing rates from the 80's onward.  

In the chart I plotted the green line to show the gap between the sexes.    For most of that time men worked more than women.    However today the women work a little more.   Today the rate is almost the same and differs by less than 1%.  

- -

Teenage Labor Participation versus Minimum Wage

The other day I wrote about how we've seen a 2% drop in the labor force participation rate.   One group that dropped significantly was teenagers age 16-19 years old.   PK commented in reply to that article and suggested I take a look at the teenager labor force participation rate as it relates to the minimum wage rate. 

Historical lookup table for the Table A-1. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age
I found the history of minimum wage rates at The Digerati Life.

Lets look at how the two relate over the past 50 years : 

(click image for full size)

Looking at that chart I don't see any kind of consistent correlation between the labor force participation rate of teenagers versus the minimum wage.

During the 60's and 70's both the labor force participation rate and the minimum wage were on steady upward slopes.   Then in the 80's and 90's the labor force mostly flattened out with some bumps up and down.   Yet the minimum wage was flat most of the 80's and 90's but there were a couple increases.   In the 21st century the labor force rate has been declining steadily while the minimum wage has been flat then up then flat again.

Part of the time they are going in different directions and other times they go in the same direction.   Its not at all consistent.   I don't see any real relationship between the two values.

We just went through a major recession so I wondered if the teenage labor force participation rate was impacted by recessions in general.    The average change in labor force participation during years we had recessions was -0.7%.    For other years the average change was 0.0%.  

Lets plot the recession years on the graph of teenager labor force participation.

This looks more like  a trend to me.   During the 60's and 70's the labor participation for teenagers was going up steadily but flattened during the recessions.   Then in the 80's and 90's the participation rate dropped along with the recessions but was inching up otherwise.    In the 2000's the rate has been dropping and it dropped the fastest during the most recent recession.

Bottom Line :  I don't see any real correlation between teenager labor force participation rates and changes in the minimum wage rates.    I do think there is some direct impact on teenager labor force rates and slowed economy during recessions.

- -