“And that’s still where I am right now,” he said, “unable to talk to somebody to find out what the issue is.” If he had not received a $1,200 stimulus check from the federal government, he said, he would not have been able to make his mortgage payment.

Last week’s tally of new claims was lower than each of the previous three weeks. But millions of additional claims are still expected to stream in from around the country over the next month, while hiring remains piddling.

States are frantically trying to catch up. California, which has processed 2.7 million claims over the last four weeks, opened a second call center on Monday. New York, which has deployed 3,100 people to answer the telephone, said this week that it had reduced the backlog that accumulated by April 8 to 4,305 from 275,000.

Florida had the largest increase in initial claims last week, although the state figures, unlike the national total, are not seasonally adjusted. That increase could be a sign that jobless workers finally got access to the system after delays, but it is impossible to assess how many potential applicants have still failed to get in.

The 10 states that have started making Pandemic Unemployment Assistance payments to workers who would not normally qualify under state guidelines are Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

Pain is everywhere, but it is most widespread among the most vulnerable.

In a survey that the Pew Research Center released on Tuesday, 52 percent of low-income households — below $37,500 a year for a family of three — said someone in the household had lost a job because of the coronavirus, compared with 32 percent of upper-income ones (with earnings over $112,600). Forty-two percent of families in the middle have been affected as well.

Those without a college education have taken a disproportionate hit, as have Hispanics and African-Americans, the survey found.