This is enlightening. Thanks for sharing. I had no idea margins were actually as thin as that. Also, when you say 'the industry', are you referring to retail in general for consumer goods?

I’m guessing this is “percent of eligible teens.” If it was all teens, the number would likely be much lower. Example, in California with the driving age at 16, even if 100% of people got it on their 16th birthday, that would still only be ~57% of all teens (no one aged 13-15 would have it).

I didn’t start driving till I had to for work.

Good question. That’s the data they have. My guess is their reporting methodology changed.

It is known that Millennials hate driving. Half of my younger peers growing up didn't even bother. They just made their parents or boyfriends drive them around. This is now me, driving my SO around.

They can't do that because they have competition who would charge less.

That pretty irrelevant… making a lot of money is pointless if you’ve only made it by the skin of your teeth.

I mean, if your suggesting that Walmart could raise prices and make more profit then why aren't they doing that already? Like if the price right now is X, then the only reason it's not X+.50c is that they've determined they would sell less at the higher price point - enough less to not offset the increased profit.

It's Walmart. Most of their products have relatively inelastic demand in that the are low cost consumer goods.

I’m from the Maritimes too I hope it doesn’t affect us

How can it drop 25% in one year?

Walmarts business model is to run prices suicidally low and strong-arm the competition with volume.

in my country, is cheaper to pay the ticket for no license twice than having a license

Fewer teen parents is a fact thanks to IUDs and other long acting reversible birth control. Having a baby means you need to get to doctor’s appointments, day care, work, school & etc. Driving makes all those things easier so I buy that explanation on part of the decline.

oops yup i def misread the chart

This is percentage, not population

I just posted this in another comment actually lol

“ I was apart of the e-commerce supply chain. They actually lose more in online sales than in store. Brick and mortar is what they thrive on. I may be recalling the quote incorrectly but, an American (on average) is no more than 6 miles away from a Walmart or Sam's Club. It’s actually kinda creepy when you think about it.”

As for the breakdown of the split, I’m not sure. I do know that most e-commerce warehouses are not profitable for the first 3 years. They use a model similar to amazon where the expansion plan is to have a warehouse in an area that covers parts of a state. I know California has most of them in So-Cal with one or two in Nor-Cal. It also depends on what type of facility it is. The shipping for large items such as bbqs and tvs vs small items like toys and personal items is what will determine the length of the timeline to profitability. If it’s a hybrid building it’s a crapshoot and all bets are off.

Your explanation is that there are fewer teen parents?

Kinda blows me away how high their COGS is. Every retailer I sell to aims for 40% gross margin.

my guess is population decline; fewer babies born = fewer drivers licenses issued

Uber and Lyft have only been around since the mid 2010s. So that can’t explain it.

If people take them, yeah 🤷🏾‍♂️

Uber and Lyft and traffic is a big factor for the decline.

I was apart of the e-commerce supply chain. They actually lose more in online sales than in store. Brick and mortar is what they thrive on. I may be recalling the quote incorrectly but, an American (on average) is no more than 6 miles away from a Walmart or Sam's Club. It’s actually kinda creepy when you think about it.

Source https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm
Tools: requests, beautiful soup and matplotlib

If the DOT site was more standardized I would’ve shown more age groups