Germany spends big to save jobs

FOR MANY economists, the model for a covid-19 furlough scheme has been Germany’s. It already had a good record, managing to avoid big job losses during the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Then, the German government paid the bulk of wages of people who had temporarily stopped working, rather than letting their employers fire them altogether. It did not prevent a nasty recession, but remarkably few jobs were lost.