People with either cushy office jobs or enough savings to be long-term unemployed are coping. The millions of service industry employees either aren’t, or soon won’t be.

I would assume there would be changes to how unemployment works if this was a regular thing.

The problem is that those changes are highly politicized, because they hit a bunch of culture war buttons about "socialism".

And it's been a while since American legislators have considered the possibility of torches and pitchforks, so they still prioritize their electability (especially in the primaries, where ideological purism is more important) over social necessity.