In first months of Czechoslovakia, wages in the cities fell by 60% in real terms owing to inflation and 350,000 workers, making up 8% of the population were unemployed. Inflation was a major problem in the first months of the new republic, all the more so as Czechoslovakia continued to use the old Habsburg notes, in common with other former nations of the Habsburg Empire, which printed their notes in abandon, in a sense "exporting" their inflation. In February 1919, a degree ordered that only Habsburg notes stamped with the Czechoslovak lion were legal tender, and in April 1919, the Czechoslovak crown was introduced as the new currency. The February degree largely ended the inflation that was threatening the economical destabilisation of Czechoslovakia.