Since the beginning of the global economic slowdown, unemployment in Spain has shot up to 17%. The Spanish government could do well to look to Germany, argues El País, where the jobless total is less dramatic.

This is the latest miracle: Germany's economic downslide has been steeper than any other big country in the EU - and yet Germany is not shedding any jobs. As a matter of fact, in the first quarter of 2009, German GDP plunged 6.9% on the same period last year, more than double the drop in Spain (-3%) (according to Eurostat). But from April 2008 to April 2009, German unemployment only inched up from 7.4% of the active population to 7.7%, while nearly doubling in Spain from 10% to 18.1%.

This German miracle admits of various explanations, two of which are the most compelling. One is flexibility: the ability to scale back working hours at companies with shortfalls in incoming orders. 1.5 million workers have now opted for State-supported Kurzarbeit, cutting their workday by a third on average, which has presumably saved almost half a million equivalent full-time jobs. The other is the temporary suspension of employment, putting jobs "on ice", as it were: whilst the company pays 10% of their wages, the State foots by and large the rest of the bill, and employees remain on the payroll - with no other duties than to make the most of their leisure time to retrain and recuperate. It is a sort of Spanish ERE (expediente de regulación de empleo) downsizing plan, but suppler and with far less red tape than in Spain, where it's hard to get the plans approved. The layoffs here in Spain are hardly affecting permanent staff at all: two thirds of the jobs shed last year were temporary positions.