Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed, and millions more cannot live on minimum wage in the years after the recession, a situation analysts call a "social state of emergency." This film travels to the regions hit hardest by job losses and shows the bottom-up responses that formed when government aid fell short: worker cooperatives, small-business incubators, and local hiring programs built by the people affected rather than handed down from Washington. Ted Howard, an advocate for cooperative ownership models, and Jane Oats, a Department of Labor official, speak to what policy can and cannot fix, while Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz and community organizer Steve Swiggum give ground-level and political counterpoints on welfare and work. Interviews move between laid-off workers, small business owners, and local officials trying to rebuild economies county by county. The film's argument is that resilience here is improvised, stitched together locally while national solutions stall.