Blood, Sweat, Toil and Tears

From a high of 12.6% in June 1997, France's jobless figure has fallen to 8.7% in May of this year, before trending upward in June, to a current 8.8%. In Germany, where unemployment has edged down only from 9.1% in June 2000 to 8.9% this year, the main problem is not job eliminations but long-term unemployment. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, Germany's long-term jobless — out of work for more than 12 months — account for 51.5% of total unemployed compared to only 20% in Denmark and 28.4% in Austria. "This is a big structural problem," says Gert Wagner, an economist at Berlin's German Insitute for Economic Research. "The challenge is how to avoid the transition from short-term unemployment to long-term unemployed."

Heidrun Zerbster, 54, is a bookkeeper in the eastern part of Berlin who has been unemployed for much of the 1990s, the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall when most jobs in the previously socialist economy simply evaporated. More recently, she worked for a year as an executive secretary. That position, which paid $1,092 a month and ended in the spring of 1999, was created by a government subsidy. When the subsidy ended, so did the job.

In Germany unemployed workers receive 60% of their salary in benefits — if, like Zerbster, they have no children — and 67% if they have offspring, for a year. After that, there are usually other safety nets available. Zerbster, who has exhausted her unemployment benefits, is now in a social welfare program called Work Help that never expires. She takes home $590 a month in welfare payments, which after rent and utility bills leaves her only $90 a month to live on. Under the rules of the welfare system, the unemployed must go on job interviews, but they are not obliged to take a position if the salary is below their expectations. Zerbster acknowledges that she has turned down jobs because she could get more money by not working. "Sometimes the after-tax salary would be less than my Work Help," Zerbster says. But she acknowledges the situation doesn't make sense. "The government doesn't know what the goal is," she says. "We're in the middle of structural change. They should get the bosses to hire more people." That's not likely in the current economic climate.

In Germany a debate is raging about what the government owes to jobless citizens like Zerbster. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder recently became embroiled in the controversy when he warned that German society would no longer tolerate healthy people who don't work. "There is no right to laziness in our society," the Chancellor said. "Whoever rejects a reasonable job offer when they can work must reckon with sanctions." Schröder's comments drew criticism from unions, left-wing politicians and jobless workers, including his own half- brother Lothar Vosseler, who recently lost his job as a municipal sewer worker.

Still, economists criticize the Schröder government for not doing enough to remove the structural problems that keep