We Called Unemployment Offices In All 50 States. Only 2 Picked Up

Call state unemployment lines across the country, and these are the kind of things you’re most likely to hear: “All representatives are currently assisting other callers”; “We are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes”; “Try your call again later”; “All of our phone lines are busy.” Across the U.S., workers are getting laid off in numbers so massive that the country’s pre-existing unemployment infrastructure is having trouble keeping up. In the last three weeks, more than 16 million workers have filed for unemployment insurance, according to the most recent data published on Thursday. That includes 6.6 million people in the last week alone. To call those numbers unprecedented would be an unstatement. They are magnitudes higher than anything the country has ever dealt with before. Read more at Vice.