Now he is staring at his bank account — totaling about $3,100 — and waiting on hold for hours at a time with the unemployment office, while cursing at its crashing website.

“I’m feeling scared,” said Mr. Palma, who is 41 and nervous about the $15,000 in medical debt he has from two recent hospital stays. “I don’t know what’s the ending. But I know I’m not in good shape.”

For the millions of Americans who found themselves without a job in recent weeks, the sharp and painful change brought a profound sense of disorientation. They were going about their lives, bartending, cleaning, managing events, waiting tables, loading luggage and teaching yoga. And then suddenly they were in free fall, grabbing at any financial help they could find, which in many states this week remained locked away behind crashing websites and overloaded phone lines.

“Everything has changed in a matter of minutes — seconds,” said Tamara Holtey, 29, an accountant for an industrial services company in the Houston area, who was on a cruise to Cozumel, Mexico, as the coronavirus outbreak intensified in the United States and was laid off on her second day back at work.

Now she spends her days applying for jobs online from her home in Alvin, Texas, while she and her wife weigh whether to delay paying their mortgage for a month or two — only to have to pay more in interest.