As mind-numbingly awful as these official figures are, they likely understate the severity of the joblessness crisis. Some unemployed people don’t know to file for jobless benefits, and others wait several weeks before collecting insurance. There are widespread reports that people have been stymied by crashing websites and hour-long waits on the phone with state offices, which have been slammed by the historic surge in claims. Our economic data, like our public-health data, are shrouded in uncertainty: In many cases, we simply don’t know whether our more dire statistics are measuring reality or we have simply maxed out our capacity to measure in the first place.

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In the early innings of the crisis, it was obvious that the forced closure of city streets would be an apocalypse-level event for restaurants, the travel industry, concerts, amusement parks, and any other company in the business of attracting a crowd. But the economic stoppage is now rippling into almost every sector of the economy. When restaurants and stores cannot open, they can’t order new supplies. When farms can’t supply restaurants with food, they can’t afford new equipment. Without new equipment orders, manufacturers have to lay off workers. If you drop a boulder into the middle of a pond, the waves will eventually reach every edge.

The most important question is: What can we do now?

Tragically, the U.S. likely missed its best opportunity to avoid mass layoffs. That would have been to take a page out of Denmark’s playbook and directly pay businesses to meet their payroll obligations and retain their employees. This would have accomplished several important goals. By reducing layoffs, it would have kept workers inside their companies, so that firms would have an easier time ramping up after the crisis passes. By reducing unemployment, it would have kept workers from having to take it on themselves to wait for hours on the phone, or online, to secure jobless benefits. By freezing the economy, it would have reduced anxiety for millions of people who, at this moment, don’t know where their next job is, or when they should realistically think about applying for work.

But with jobless claims surging toward 10 million, we may be too late to pivot toward the northern-European approach.

Instead, the U.S. economic rescue package implicitly encourages layoffs and increases spending on the unemployed. Jobless benefits have been expanded, and many households will receive one-time payments of $1,200 per adult—plus $500 per child.

Strengthening our jobless benefit programs in this way was necessary to keep families from starving, given the inevitability of historic layoffs. But had the U.S. reacted swiftly and creatively to the prospect of a historic sudden-stop recession, this level of layoffs would not have been inevitable. We could have paid workers a living wage to stay with their companies. Instead, companies are firing workers en masse, and we’re scrambling to pay them a living wage anyway.