Sign on a Barbershop Announcing Special Prices for the Unemployed (1927) In July 1927, the Reichstag passed a comprehensive unemployment insurance program. The law provided for benefits for 26 weeks at 25 to 75 percent of the basic wage one had received. The special prices offered to the unemployed at this barbershop were an acknowledgment of their strapped (but not entirely destitute) state. In 1927, no one envisioned the catastrophic levels of unemployment that would hit Germany just three years later.