Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"That one most important characteristic is education. Let me share with you the unemployment rates right now for people with different levels of education. The unemployment rate for high school dropouts right now is over 10 percent - 10.5 percent. The unemployment rate for high school graduates is 6 percent. The unemployment rate, however, for college graduates is 3 percent. Now, all these rates are up over the last year, but obviously the big difference here is that we're talking about an unemployment rate for high school dropouts that's over three times greater than it is for college graduates. I think what this is signifying is that obviously in today's economy, a worker with more education is considered more valuable. In fact, there is a term in the workforce called worker hoarding, and what that means is that during economic downturns what you will often find is that businesses will actually try to keep their better workers - those with more training and education - even though the current economic situation may say to them, you should get rid of them, you should cut their hours back. But they keep them on the payroll because they don't want to lose them. They know that they will need them when the economy comes back and, of course, it takes time and effort to hire more folks. So, again if there's another reason that people need to hear about why education is important, it is that during a recession, those with training do tend to keep their jobs."