Distribution of Unemployed

With the economy on its way to -- or in the midst of -- a recession, which is classically characterized by rising unemployment, these figures are illustrative of your parents' proclamations to "get an education."

From The Naked Economist comes the following distribution of the unemployed (data originally from the Department of Labor), by educational level:

• 8.2 percent for high school dropouts
• 4.7 percent for high school graduates with no college
• 3.7 percent for workers with an associate's degree or some college
• 2 percent for workers with a bachelor's degree and higher

More from the story:

Other countries around the globe are narrowing the income gap with the United States in large part because they're sending an increasing proportion of their young people to college and we're not.

So it may be too late for you -- and you should have listened to your parents! -- it's not too late for your children.