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

"There is some good news, and it is that there are actually jobs available. A recent study found that there were over 3 million job vacancies nationwide. Sectors where there's the biggest need are health care and education. So I think that raises the question, Why aren't people without jobs snapping up these 3 million job vacancies? And the reason is simply a skills mismatch. That is to say that people who are unemployed don't have the necessary skills to fill those jobs that are open. Now we're not just talking about the factory worker, who might not have a college education. We're also talking about college-educated professional workers who have lost their jobs during this recession, people like engineers, architects and computer specialists. They don't have the skills; in fact, they may be overqualified for many of these jobs. And indeed, these professional jobs have been some of the hardest hit during the recession. So the bottom line here is that if you do have an opportunity to go back to school for training, certainly consider training in areas like health care and education because there are still job openings in those fields."