While the majority of European countries had rising unemployment figures, Germany's figures were 6.6 per cent (a fraction compared with Spain). Given the European economic challenges, German's economic performance has been fairly positive compared with its neighbouring countries. In terms of its labour market performance, unemployment decreased by 82,000 to 3,028,000 from February to March 2012. In seasonally adjusted terms, unemployment decreased by 18,000. According to the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, when compared to the previous year, the number of unemployed persons declined by 182,000 in Germany. In order to save jobs, Germany developed a concept of tripartite burden sharing. The concept entails short- term work programmes. Employees had to forfeit part of their income and the State took a lot of burden in subsidising the wages (wage subsidy) and labour agencies got to play a role in terms of finding people jobs. It encouraged co-operation amongst various relevant stakeholders in the labour market and it says workers should work for few hours and entitled to 50% of the previous working hours. The tripartite burden sharing has been pointed out as a reason for success of the German economy.