My older brother went through this recently after losing his job and not finding one again for another several months. Thankfully, he got hired on at a new place right before Christmas! I'm so very happy for him!
I'm lucky enough that my current field is very small and it's generally pretty easy to get a callback from an employer. But I remember when I wasn't in this field and had to spend hours a day filling out a zillion applications hoping maybe 1 in 100 would give you a call back.
There has got to be a better system. Especially because every single online job application website makes you both upload a copy of your resume and then manually re type out the whole thing again. It makes these things take infinitely longer than they should. Why????