(FORTUNE Magazine) – If you live with a teenager, you may think he or she is a little peculiar. (Strange. Inscrutable. Maddening. Pick your adjective.) But here's something even more so: federal unemployment statistics. (Yes, there is a connection.) Certain oddities leap out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly joblessness numbers. The official U.S. unemployment rate stands at 4.3%, an uptick from earlier in 2001--but unemployment among grownups is only 3.7%, a 35-year record low. So what accounts for the difference? Teens ages 16 to 19, whose unemployment rate hovers around 14% (up from 13.1% last year). Lump that figure into the average, and the result is what Mark Twain called the third kind of lie. ("Big lies. Damned lies. And statistics.")

Does this mean your teen won't be able to find a summer job? No. Says Karen Kosanovich, an analyst at the Bureau of Labor Statistics: "High rates of teen unemployment are a persistent phenomenon"--peaking at 22% during the last recession (1990-91). "Teen workers are more transitory. They tend to stop and start work because of school schedules, transportation problems.... Because they're not supporting anyone else, they can afford to wait for the 'right' job," she says. In fact, employers say they're seeing more resumes from teenagers that feature volunteer work, Outward Bound trips, or exotic travel.

And if your little darling comes to you this spring and says that he or she has signed on at a fast-food place, consider: Tricon--the $22-billion-a-year PepsiCo spinoff (NYSE: YUM) that runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC--is launching a new employee-training program that stresses "listening, empathy, exceeding expectations, and recovering from a mistake," says human resources head Gregg Dedrick. Now, don't you know a few people who could benefit from that training? And they're not all teens, are they?