Jobless Rates Up in Italy and Spain, but Down in Germany LONDON - Spain and Italy creaked under record unemployment rates at the end of 2011, while the German jobless rate fell to historic lows - results that put the onus firmly on Germany, with Europe's biggest economy, to take the lead in steering the euro zone back to recovery. Joblessness in Italy rose to 8.9 percent, its highest level since current records began in 2004, the country's statistics institute said Tuesday. Spain ended the year with unemployment at a 17-year high of 22.85 percent. German unemployment, by contrast, fell to 6.7 percent in January, a decline of a tenth of a percentage point from December. The German jobs data show that "there is life and fun after austerity," said Holger Schmieding, an economist in London for Berenberg Bank. As its economy becomes more dominant in the region, Germany faces mounting pressure to lead the euro zone in the unenviable task of promoting both growth and austerity in the region, while also trying to end an acute balance-of-payments crisis. But hopes that Germany, which traditionally has focused on exports, has much leeway to persuade its citizens to buy more goods and services from other parts of Europe may be misplaced, and the more urgent task would appear to be restoring market faith in the euro zone. Across the zone as a whole, meanwhile, concerns about the economic outlook appear to have dampened the traditional pre-Christmas shopping spree in Germany and France, data showed Tuesday. In France, consumer spending unexpectedly dropped 0.7 percent in December, a sign that consumers tightened their purse strings in the face of uncertainties over jobs and economic growth. "What's obvious is that we've got a real stagnation in consumer spending, which raises questions about France's economic model, which is based largely on dynamic consumption," Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank, said. Data suggested a similar problem in Germany, where retail sales unexpectedly fell 1.4 percent in December. But economists said anecdotal evidence, as well as recent consumer surveys, suggested that German demand remained buoyant and that the figure would be revised upward. "As long as the labor market is doing well, consumption will be strong," Ulrike Rondorf, an economist at Commerzbank, said. That is a lesson Europe's weaker countries may learn by following Germany's lead. Back in 2005, Germany's jobless rate soared to above 12 percent, while Spain's fell to below 8.5 percent. Since then, Berlin has implemented changes to labor laws, matching work hours more closely to demand, introducing job sharing and encouraging part-time work. By the end of 2011 the unemployment picture of the two countries had reversed. Germany "has showed that there is a way to prevent this rise in unemployment," Etienne de Callatay, an economist at Bank Degroof in Brussels, said.