An added complication to this crisis: Jobs will not be recreated where they were destroyed

In a “normal” recession, once the crisis is over , jobs are recreated more or less where they were destroyed. Short-time working schemes are then highly effective, as they buy companies time for production to get going again. But the recession caused by the COVID crisis has an additional trait : the sectoral structure of the economy is going to be modified greatly, which means that jobs are not going to be recreated where they were destroyed. This means that short-time working schemes by themselves are not effective: companies are not going to rehire the employees they have placed on short-time work. This calls for a new mechanism that combines short-time working with retraining.