Jobs - An Economic Benefit of an Educated Population?

Yesterday, Blaine sent me a CNBC story listing the easiest and hardest cities in which to find a job as reported by the online job search firm Juju (http://www.cnbc.com/id/34620027/).  As I scrolled through the top ten best and worst cities (Orlando is listed as the tenth worst with 8.92 unemployed individuals per advertised job - Detroit is the worst at 20.76 unemployed individuals per advertised job), it occurred to me that the best cities (DC, San Jose, Baltimore, Boston, NYC) seemed to track closely with higher educational attainment levels, in data that was recently published by The Brookings Institution in its State of Metropolitan America report (http://www.brookings.edu/metro/StateOfMetroAmerica.aspx).  So, I decided to do a quick plot of the top ten best and worst cities to find a job against those cities' respective educational attainment levels as represented by the percentage of their age 25+ populations holding graduate degrees, which looks like this:

As I had suspected, all but two of the best job markets (again, measured by unemployed individuals per advertised job) ranked in the top 20 metros for graduate degree attainment; Salt Lake City (6th best job market) checked in at 39th and San Antonio (10th best job market) checked in at 77th).  In a similar vein, none of the ten worst job markets ranked higher than 36th (St. Louis) in graduate degree attainment, with Orlando (80th), Las Vegas (91st), and Riverside (93rd) all residing toward the bottom of the ranking.  (Unfortunately, it doesn't seem possible to do a direct comparison across the largest 100 metro markets, as Juju only tracks the top 50.)

So, what does this plot mean?  It seems clear that well-educated communities are faring better in today's economy; either they have less unemployed people, more job opportunities, or both.  Is this a function of the types of industries located in those communities; industries that perhaps rely on educated people?  Or is this a function of those communities attracting smart people to their environs who then create job opportunities for themselves and those around them?

Whatever the case, I suspect that having a highly-educated workforce will remain a competitive advantage, even as the general U.S. economic environment improves.  What do you think?