I was going to add this little tidbit to yesterday's post about the pay of NC teachers, but I didn't save it and couldn't find it! Thanks to my friend Johnny for posting it today! Why Teacher Pay Matters Guess who the largest employer is in most counties in NC? The school system. It is the largest employer in 64 counties. It is the second largest employer in 12 other counties. There is only one  (yes one) county in the state in which the school system is not in the top three employers. If you think of a raise as an economic stimulus, more money in the pay checks of 95,000 teachers (spread out from Manteo to Murphy) will mean more middle-class people buying groceries, going on vacations, etc. And that will have a real, immediate economic impact on the state as a whole.

Well, not quite, but they seem to fair better as do state capitals. College towns do OK in recession For others, there was no heady boom — but no dramatic downturn either. A USA TODAY analysis reveals two categories of cities that have weathered the recession and housing market meltdown better than many boomtowns: College towns and state capitals. In some cases, these cities have grown even faster during the recession than before. It's a positive article in comparison to so much out there.