Kurzarbeit. When demand collapses, a German employer cuts hours rather than jobs, and the state pays workers around 60 percent of the wages lost — more for those with children.
A work-sharing scheme was first used by German miners as early as 1910. It flourished under the Weimar Republic, was written into employment promotion law by 1969, and was used again during reunification. In mid-2009 over 1.4 million workers and 63,000 employers were in it. In 2020 a study attributed 2.2 million saved jobs to it.
The IMF calls it the gold standard. The country built a permanent institution whose purpose is to make redundancy unnecessary.