WSJ Europe, Opinion Section: Can you spot the difference between the two images reproduced here? No? Well, we have to admit, it's really not easy.

It is much easier to spot the hole in the budget the German labor office's attempt at corporate redesign will cause. While the office itself is tight-lipped about the price tag, advertising experts estimate that the design and introduction of the new logo (right) will cost taxpayers about 10 million euros. Apparently, that kind of money buys you a white stylized "A" (for Arbeit or labor) on a red background replacing the old red stylized "A" on a white background. Thanks to this ingenious reversal of colors, the new logo reminds some people of a stop sign. The message to the country's five million unemployed appears to be: don't enter, don't bother.

It all started in 2002 when it transpired that the labor office, known as a rather sleepy bureaucracy, had shown unusual initiative. Unfortunately, it had used its new-found energy not to find work for the unemployed but to inflate the number of successful job placements by roughly 70%. This scandal forced the government to finally try to turn this behemoth of almost 100,000 civil servants into an efficient job-search machine. A new name was to signal this reorganization and the dynamic Federal Agency for Labor was born, laying to rest the old and ineffectual Federal Institution for Labor (the German word for "institution" being plagued by the same double-entendre as in English). This subtle rebranding now also has its equally subtle logo redesign.

Unfortunately, it will take more than a color reversal to reverse the trajectory of German unemployment. Removal of the stop sign that labor law represents would work better.