More Jobs, More Jobless

There have been waves of bad job news out of Germany lately — unemployment in February reached 5.2 million, the highest level since World War II. But read the fine print: Germany created thousands of new jobs last year, too. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 261,000 jobs were created in the last quarter of 2004 alone.

How can unemployment and employment go up at the same time? It's simple: the employment pie got larger, as did the unemployment slice. Many of the new jobs went to people not traditionally in the job-seeking pool. The trend was toward...