Unemployment: foreigners bear the brunt; the global economic slowdown has not left Switzerland unscathed. Foreigners here are having a tough time job-wise. A report.
| Auteur | Hollingdale, Michael |
For so many long years has Switzerland been regarded as the land of milk and honey that the economic slowdown affecting the country over the last few years has been something of a shock for the seven million people living here.
Economic growth has been sluggish since around 2001 and the unemployment rate which was just 1.8 per cent in the year 2000 jumped to more than four per cent at the beginning of this year. This is pretty low in comparison to Switzerland's European neighbours, but it still is rather a shock for a country used to having a negligible rate of joblessness.
What is also disturbing about the most recent slowdown is that it has affected white-collar managerial positions whose incumbents believed they had a job for life. Bankers, insurance specialists and IT professionals found they were now surplus to requirements as companies strove to protect shareholder value in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the US in September 2001.
Often, the first to be shown the door were foreign workers from neighbouring European countries who had been attracted to Switzerland by generous salaries and higher standards of living. So the unemployment rate for foreign workers in Switzerland was pushed up and is currently more than seven percent, with the jobless rate for Swiss workers at just three per cent.
Case Studies
With changing economic patterns and the end of the "job for life" culture, many of us will experience at least one period of unemployment during our lives.
The good news is that if you do lose your job in Switzerland, the country, still has probably the most generous insurance system in the world. And remember, you paid into it while you were in work, so take advantage of it if you need to.
Swiss News talks to two professionals who saw their jobs slip away and benefited from the Swiss system.
Patrick Munroe, a 36-year-old, British communications specialist narrates his experience. He says, "I was out of work from July 2002 to April 2004 and received the maximum unemployment insurance in excess of more than CHF 6,000 a month. To begin with I was unemployed in Ticino where the process of claiming for the insurance was reasonably simple and I was supplied with an English-speaking counsellor to help me in my search for work. When I moved to Nyon in canton Vaud to start a work experience project in Lausanne, I was really impressed with the lack of bureaucracy involved in transferring my claim. However, in my final four months in the...
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