A recent report by Addiction Suisse says Switzerland has created the ideal environment for the sale and consumption of drugs. The report points out the easy availability of drugs in Switzerland. It says illegal drugs can be found quickly, easily and cheaply in Swiss cities. In addition, legal drugs are available around the clock in […]
Swiss unemployment rate rises
There are various ways to measure unemployment. Switzerland’s standard measure looks at the number of people registered with unemployment offices across the country. By this measure Switzerland’s unemployment recently reached a 10 year low of 2.6%. Today, another unemployment measure was published. It shows a 0.1% increase in unemployment over the fourth quarter of 2018 to 4.6% […]
Swiss deflation continues for third month in a row
In January 2019, prices fell 0.3%. This follows monthly declines of 0.3% in both November and December 2018. Falling clothing, shoe, heating oil and medicine prices were the main drivers of the monthly price decline, which was muted by rising hotel and electricity prices. By the end of January 2019, Swiss consumer prices, based on […]
Switzerland’s federal surplus even larger than expected
In October 2018, government number crunchers revised Switzerland’s federal forecast budget surplus up from CHF 0.3 billion to CHF 2.5 billion. Today, Bern announced that provisional calculations for 2018 now show a surplus of CHF 2.9 billion, CHF 0.4 billion more than last year’s revised figure. The increase was driven by strict spending discipline and […]
Switzerland set to ban the grinding of live baby chickens
Only female hens can lay eggs. Many of the hens used to produce eggs come from hatcheries that sort and dispose of the male chicks. One way some dispose of these unwanted chicks is by grinding them alive, a gruesome process known as maceration – this video shows how it’s done [WARNING: graphic footage]. Defenders […]
Switzerland’s gender pay gap closes further
A recent survey by the Federal Statistical Office shows the overall median pay gap in Switzerland’s private sector shrunk to 12% in 2016, down from 12.5% in 2014 and 15.6% in 2010. In 2016, median pay for women was CHF 6,011 francs a month and median pay for men was CHF 6,830. The gap rose […]
Nearly half of Swiss admit to stealing
Either at work, at a restaurant, on public transport or in a shop, nearly half of Swiss admit to stealing, according to a survey by moneyland.ch 49% of the 1,500 questioned in the survey admitted to pocketing something without paying. Young people admitted to being the most light fingered. Around a fifth of those aged […]
Switzerland scores well on youth job market conditions but suffers from skills mismatch
A recent report places Switzerland second in a ranking of 33 european countries on conditions in the youth labour market in 2016 – youth are those between 15 and 24. Switzerland’s overall score of 5.67 out of 7.00 is close to Denmark’s 5.72. Switzerland’s highest scores are for employment rate (6.01) and working conditions (5.77), […]
Swiss organic farm output doubles
Between 1999 and 2017 the amount of organic food produced on Swiss farms more than doubled. In 1999, 5.3% of Switzerland’s farm output was organic. By 2017 this figure had risen to 11.7%. In 1999, Swiss farms produced CHF 562 million worth of organic food. In 2017, they produced CHF 1.2 billion. Consumers are spending […]
Internal EU letter says grant no concessions to Switzerland
An internal EU commission letter says that without a framework agreement Swiss-EU agreements granting access to the EU single market will only be changed if it is in the EU’s interest, according to the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and the Keystone-SDA news agency. The letter dated 10 January 2019 and signed by Martin Selmayr, […]
