By the end of May 2021, the percentage of Switzerland’s workforce registered as out of work had fallen to 3.1%, down from 3.3% in April 2021. The figures are based on those registered as unemployed at regional employment centres and exclude many of those that have been out of for more than two years and […]
Swiss president warns EU against reprisal after collapsed negotiation
Last week, negotiations between Switzerland and the EU ended after failure to find agreement on key elements of a deal governing the relationship between Switzerland and the bloc. Over the weekend, Switzerland’s president Guy Parmelin defended the abrupt break in negotiations and sent a clear message to EU strategists in Brussels. Speaking to the newspaper […]
Sharp drop in hours worked in Switzerland in 2020
The total number of hours worked in Switzerland in 2020 dropped by nearly 4% compared to 2019, announced the Federal Statistical Office this week. In a year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic total hours worked in Switzerland dropped by nearly 300 million or 3.7% compared to the previous year. In 2019, 7.9 billion hours of […]
Nearly two thirds of Swiss support EU framework agreement, suggests poll
Switzerland and the EU have been working at failing to agree on a new agreement on Switzerland’s relationship with the EU for sometime now. One point of negotiating leverage used by Switzerland is that Swiss voters would reject the deal proposed by the EU in a referendum. However, a recent poll suggests that might not […]
40,000 hotel and restaurant jobs lost in Switzerland in 2020
Recent data show that Swiss hotels and restaurants shed 40,000 jobs in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with restaurants reliant on business travel hit the hardest, according to RTS. These figures do not include the effects of the pandemic beyond the end of 2020 and therefore exclude the impact of the pandemic […]
Swiss consumer sentiment nearly back to pre-crisis level
Consumer sentiment among Swiss households is improving, according to Switzerland’s economic affairs office (SECO). In April 2021, the consumer sentiment index climbed back to -7 points after reaching a low of -40 in early 2020. The level of -7 is close to the pre-crisis level of early 2020 and close to its long term average […]
SWISS plans large cuts to fleet and staff numbers
On 6 May 2021, SWISS announced a plan to cut jobs and the size of its fleet. Due to the continuing global coronavirus pandemic and structural changes in the market, the company expects a 20% structural decline in demand. In response, the airline plans to cut the fleet it had in 2019 by 15% and […]
Real Swiss salaries up most in 5 years
On 30 April 2021, Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office released salary data for 2020 which showed a 1.5% rise in real salaries compared to 2019. In 2020, a 0.8% rise in nominal salaries was boosted by inflation of -0.7% bringing the total increase in the real average Swiss salary to 1.5%. The last time salaries rose […]
Switzerland books a federal deficit of 14 billion francs in 2020
On 14 April 2021, Switzerland’s federal government announced it had spent CHF 14.2 billion more that it had collected in revenue in 2020. The loss represents the federal government’s consolidated excess expenditure for the year and is linked to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the statement. An additional CHF 16.8 billion was […]
Minimum wage hurting young people in Swiss canton
Around three years ago, the Swiss canton of Jura introduced a minimum wage of CHF 20 an hour (US$ 21.65). Now there is political pressure relook at the move, according to RTS. A group of cantonal parliamentarians from the PDC (CVP) is pushing for a review of the situation in response to pressure from some […]
