Just a few weeks ago, journalist-turned-bartender and server Lyndon German was feeling desperate.

In the past year, the 26-year-old Mechanicsville native has seen his reporter jobs in Hopewell and Petersburg end as a result of newsroom cutbacks, and now his restaurant job in a popular local café has disappeared as a result of COVID-19.

“My roommate worked in a mall operation, and she also was laid off” after non-essential brick-and-mortar operations were forced to close, Mr. German said. “We worried about where the money would come from to the pay the rent and other bills. I tried looking for a job, but I didn’t find a lot of opportunity in this environment.”

For the moment, however, the desperation has disappeared now that unemployment money is hitting both their bank accounts.

Across the country, millions of unemployed people are suddenly in better shape financially thanks to Congress’ creation of a $600-a-week unemployment benefit that will last through July 31.

Those payments are not just for ordinary workers but also are going to members of the so-called “gig economy” who work as independent contractors in performing work not on a standard payroll.

The $600 a week is big jump from the typical unemployment available in most states. In Virginia, the maximum payment is less than $400 a week, with most people qualifying for about $250 a week or less based on their regular earnings.

With the state benefit added to the federal payment, the total benefit is now putting between $850 and $1,000 a week into many families’ accounts — a raise for many, although not for all workers hit by recent layoffs.

Still that money is meaningful for the nearly 500,000 people who have filed for unemployment in Virginia and the more than 26 million who have filed across the country, boosting unemployment to near 17 percent of the workforce since mid- March. That’s a record surge and huge reversal after unemployment nationally had fallen below 4 percent.

The unemployment figures are even worse for African-Americans, whose occupations are among the hardest hit during the pandemic and whose percentage of unemployed people has long been double that of the white population.

Scott Garrett, co-owner of Lift Coffee Shop in Downtown that is now closed, has been impressed at the help the federal unemployment benefit is providing to his employees. But he, like other business owners, expects that to yield a potentially sharp increase down the road in the premium for unemployment insurance he pays to help fund the state program.

Mr. Garrett said he had to lay off 13 employees when the shop was shut down because of the coronavirus precautions under the governor’s executive order. He said many of his employees now “are making more than they did when they were working.”

That’s the case for Elton Christian, who was laid off as a cook when the Hull Street restaurant where he worked closed. His wife, Audrey Christian, said, “I’m definitely feeling better about our situation.”

Before the federal unemployment checks began arriving, she said she was waking up in the middle of the night worried about how she would cover health insurance premiums that had become unaffordable with just one income.

She struggled at first to get her husband enrolled on the unemployment website. But with help from state Sen. Joseph D. “Joe” Morrissey, the roadblock was lifted and now she said the unemployment checks, which amount to more than her husband’s regular paychecks, have temporarily eased her money worries.

She was not alone in facing glitches to sign up for unemployment as computer systems in states across the country were overwhelmed by the sudden surge in ap- plications — from a few thousand to tens of thousands.

That was the case for the Virginia Employment Commission, which took in 493,501 applications for unemployment benefits in the five weeks between March 16 and April 18, with more than 100,00 applications pouring in during at least one seven-day period.

The department appears to have over- come the glitches, with complaints about signing up now easing as the number of filings has fallen to around 83,000 a week.

Mr. German had no problems filing for benefits. He said the money is “a relief,” even though he knows he’ll have to include the unemployment benefits as income on next year’s tax return and the payments will come to an end weeks from now.

He is keeping his fingers crossed that the pandemic will end, the economy will crank up and he can go back to work because August and September and the rest of the year are coming, he said, and he doesn’t want to start worrying again about where to find the rent money.