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

"Well, this is not good news, and unfortunately most economists think the unemployment rate both nationally and here in North Carolina will go higher. I think it's virtually assured that here in North Carolina we will see a 10 percent unemployment rate by the end of the year. Now we hope to see some recovery in the economy at the end of the year, as we hope to see spending come back somewhat. But that probably won't be soon enough to arrest the rise in unemployment. In fact, oftentimes what we see is the general economy recovers before the job market because employers, once they do see, perhaps, their sales coming back, they want to wait. They want to make sure that that's for real. And so they will delay hiring additional people. Or factories will delay bringing shifts back until they are absolutely sure the economy is back on track. So we likely won't see the job market improve measurably until sometime in 2010."