or far too many American workers, the pandemic has delivered a one-two punch of hardship. The American Voices Project, a national study of the ongoing crisis brought on by the coronavirus, recently interviewed a 26-year-old essential worker about the pandemic’s first punch: “I was working at a gas station, bringing home enough to get me by,” she said. “And then the Corona hit, my hours got cut, I was only working one or two days, sometimes no days, and then I was out of a job. It literally was hell … I was suffocating in bills.”