Job applicants fill out forms at a job fair in Santa Clara, Calif., on Jan. 23, 2010. (AP)

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As Congress works on a pared-back jobs bill, a bracing new study shows that unemployment isn’t hitting all Americans equally. Far from it.

The country’s top income brackets are barely touched by joblessness, while low-income groups face staggering unemployment — levels over 30 percent. Those are Great Depression numbers, or worse.

What this means for American society — not just inequality but long-term economic stability — is an urgent question. Our guests today have the numbers, and a sobering analysis.

This hour, On Point: Unemployment, inequality, and tackling America’s jobs crisis.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation this week.

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Ben Pershing, a congressional reporter for The Washington Post and writer for the Post’s politics and policy blog, “44.” He’s been covering the current job-creation bill in Congress.

Joining us in our studio is Barry Bluestone, professor of political economy and founding director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University.

Also in our studio we’re joined by Andrew Sum, professor of economics and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He’s principle author of a new study analyzing unemployment levels amongst different income-groups (pdf).

(AP)

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A new federal budget proposal rolls out today — and the deficit number it foresees this year? $1.6 trillion. A staggering new high. The biggest since World War II.

There is a not so quiet freak-out underway in Washington as U.S. debt and deficits soar into nosebleed territory. The country has whiplashed from Clinton surplus to big Bush deficits to Obama-era deficits super-fueled by recession and response.

Can’t stop spending. Can’t stay a world power on the path we’re on.

This hour, On Point: Deficit fever hits Washington.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Toledo, Ohio, is Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Democratic Congresswoman representing Ohio’s 9th District, which includes Toledo. She sits on both the House Appropriations Committee and the Budget Committee.

Joining us from Washington, DC, is Rep. Trent Franks, Republican Congressman representing Arizona’s 2nd district, which includes many Phoenix suburbs.

Also from Washington is Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1995. She’s co-author of “Creating an Opportunity Society” and “Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget.”

And from Berkeley, Calif., we’re joined by Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.  His most recent book is “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life.”

A pending home sale in Palo Alto, Calif. Nationwide, home resales are up 9 percent from January, new home sales have climbed 17 percent and construction, though still anemic, has risen almost 20 percent. (AP)

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Some hopeful signs out there for the economy. The GDP’s plunge has slowed — some economists see it bottoming out, and turning around.

Housing sales are up. Manufacturing — stabilized. Ditto construction. The Obama team hit the airwaves Sunday to sound a note of cautious optimism. The president and vice president hit the road this week to talk up the economy.

But hanging over it all is a dark cloud of unemployment. With jobs still scarce, what kind of recovery, if any, can we expect?

This hour, On Point: Crisis and recovery. Is the economy at a turning point?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guests:

Joining us from New York is John Harwood. He’s chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, and a political writer for The New York Times. His latest book, co-authored with Gerald Seib, is “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.”

Joining us from New Haven is Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University. He collaborated with economist Karl Case to produce the Case-Schiller Home Price Index, the most widely used database of housing prices in the U.S. He’s the co-founder and chief economist of Macro Markets, a specialty investment bank that trades in real estate markets. His latest book is “Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism.”

Joining us from Philadelphia is Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s author of “The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New,” and “Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-Term Investment Strategies.”

A line winds through the Cleveland Convention Center as people wait at a recent job fair. (AP)

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As the Great Recession rolls on, American jobs and wages keep taking the hit. But workplace by workplace, the way that hit is shared is all over the map.

Headlines just today: Methodist bishops take pay cut. The publisher Gannett will shed 1400 jobs – those staffers just gone. University of California will have furloughs.

Economists say layoffs may be best for the bottom line. They get the pain “out the door.” But in times this bad, many Americans are ready to share the pain to save jobs. To a point.

This hour, On Point: how the pain is shared – or not – when cutbacks hit the workplace.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Greg Ip, U.S. economics editor for The Economist. His recent piece, “The Quiet Americans,” looked at employees, pay cuts and unpaid leave in the recession.

Truman Bewley, professor of economics at Yale University and author of the book “Why Wages Don’t Fall During a Recession.”

Katherine Newman, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and author of several books on work and the American economic landscape, including “The Missing Class” and “Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market.”

Clockwise from top left: U.S. Marines move into Afghanistan's Helmand province on Thursday; Senator-elect Al Franken on Tuesday, shortly after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in his favor; South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, in an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday; people wait in line at a job fair in Seattle earlier this month. (AP)

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Jobs, jobs, jobs. And war. As Americans mark another Independence Day, the news at the end of the week reminds us where the nation stands.

In Washington, the White House responds to new unemployment numbers — now at 9.5 percent — and to critics of its stimulus plan.

In Afghanistan, 4,000 Marines move into Taliban territory. While in Iraq, U.S. troops move out of the cities — as bombings increase.

In Minnesota, the Democrats gain a 60th U.S. senator. In South Carolina, Republicans look to get rid of a governor.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Steve Chapman, columnist and editorial writer for The Chicago Tribune.

Gebe Martinez, political columnist and contributor to Politico.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

The New Frugality (Time cover.)

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In the Great Depression, people lined up at soup kitchens, saved string, and gathered around the hearth.

Now, in our own “Great Recession,” Americans are clipping coupons, cancelling vacations, and also struggling to make ends meet.

These are indeed tough times. 57% of Americans now say the American Dream will be harder to achieve, according to a Time magazine poll and cover story. The magazine also found new attitudes about frugality, what we value, and what we expect – even after the economy recovers.

This Hour, On Point: the new American era of thrift.

You can join the conversation. What’s your story of thrift in an era of recession? How does it echo what this country has been through before? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Nancy Gibbs, editor-at-large at TIME Magazine, and a former professor of journalism at Princeton University. Her article, “The New Frugality,” is the cover story for this week’s issue of TIME Magazine. You can see the profiles of average people the magazine interviewed — from an organic gardener to a doggie day care owner — for the new issue.

Joining us from Berkeley, California is Martha Olney, professor of economics at University of California-Berkeley. She is author of “Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s” and co-author, with Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, of “Essentials of Economics.”

More links:

Some of the sound narratives used in today’s show come courtesy of Story Corps. You can listen to hundreds of other stories at the organization’s Web site.

The San Fransisco Chronicle recently spoke with people who lived through the Great Depression and posted some video of the interviews. Frugality and its many forms have become trendy, as The New York Times noted recently. And Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a long-time student of the Great Depression, spoke about the connection between then and now at a recent forum.

(AP)

It’s a battle zone out there in the US economy. Lines at the door of American banks, in photos that look out of the 1930s. Home foreclosures still surging. The federal government stepping in big to try and brace up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fears of worse to come.

This isn’t the picture economist Martin Feldstein had in mind when he began advising Ronald Reagan on tax cuts, deregulation, and supply side economics in the 1980s. But it’s what we’ve got.

This hour, On Point: Heavyweight Harvard economist Martin Feldstein on the fix we’re in, and what comes next for the US economy.

- Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guests:

Martin Feldstein, economics professor at Harvard University, is president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan.

OK, here’s the blue economy scenario for 2008. Housing prices keep falling. Credit stays tight. Consumers choke. In retailing, restaurants, travel and more, jobs vanish. In real estate, construction and banking, investment seizes up. Money retreats. Growth is gone. And we’ve got a recession on our hands.

For months, economists have debated whether it’s here already. “Slow motion train wreck,” is a phrase that sticks. Now, Goldman Sachs says we’re going down, and even the president is talking “challenges.”

This hour, On Point: talking recession — who gets hurt and how we get out.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Greg Ip, chief economic correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and lead writer for the blog “Real Time Economics.”

Robert Gordon, professor of economics and social sciences at Northwestern University and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Allen Sinai, chief global economist, strategist, and president of Decision Economics, Inc.

Steve Liesman, senior economics reporter at CNBC.