With more than 30 million people out of work and a growing number of Americans feeling severely cash-strapped, loans are a lifeline.

If you can get one.

Despite rock-bottom interest rates, banks are tightening lending standards across the board, shrinking the availability of credit.

“If you can get a loan, then the price of it is going to be relatively low,” said Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist at LendingTree, an online loan marketplace. “The challenge right now is access.”

For example, credit card rates are down to a three-and-a-half-year low of 16.22%, according to Bankrate. Yet banks are making credit cards much harder to get in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Matt Schulz, chief industry analyst at CompareCards.

As conditions worsen, credit card issuers have begun closing accounts and lowering credit limits, particularly on those accounts that are at a greater risk of becoming delinquent.

One-quarter of all credit cardholders, or just under 50 million people, saw their limit slashed or their card closed altogether in the past 30 days — a number so high that CompareCards reran the survey to verify its accuracy, according to Schulz.

“It just goes to show the enormity of the impact of this outbreak on the economy, and on banks and on cardholders,” he said.