Teen employment and the minimum wage over 60 years

Great post by Mark Perry of "Carpe Diem."

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Marginal Revolution, Cafe Hayek and the Coyote Blog are all featuring the chart above and the blog post about the
minimum wage lawgovernment-mandated wage that guarantees reduced employment opportunities for teenagers by Kevin Erdmann on his Idiosyncratic Whisk blog.

About the seven minimum wage increases that occurred in 1954, 1961, 1967, 1974, 1990 and 2007, Kevin writes that:

In every episode, except 1996 (which is the smallest hike relative to average wages), there was a distinct decline in the trend of teen employment, over the period of time covering from a few months before the initial hike until a few months after the follow-up hike.

Note that the black lines in the chart above are the trends in teenage employment established before an increase in the minimum wage and the red lines are the trends in teenage employment after a hike in the minimum wage.

Kevin ends his post by asking:

Is there any other issue where the data conforms so strongly to basic economic intuition, and yet is widely written off as a coincidence?"