by Seco: "rise in unemployment not surprising, will rise again" Keystone-SDA Listen to the article Listening the article Toggle language selector English (US)
Topics:
Swissinfo considers the following as important: 3) Swiss Markets and News, 3.) Swissinfo Business and Economy, Featured, newsletter
This could be interesting, too:
Artis Shepherd writes Caplan’s Errors on the UAE and Open Borders
Joaquin Monfort writes USD/CHF Price Forecast: Reaches overbought levels
Ryan McMaken writes We’re Already on Track for a Trillion Deficit this Year
Jane L. Johnson writes It’s Greek to Us: Angry Generation Z Women Reenact “Lysistrata” Post-Election
The unemployment rate in the Swiss watchmaking touched 5.5% in September, up from 3% the year earlier.
Switzerland overall experienced a slight increase in unemployment in September (2.5% after 2.4% in August). The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), expects a further rise, albeit not too strong.
“The trend of a slight increase in unemployment continued in September, as we expected,” Jean-Christophe Lanzeray, head of the Labor Directorate at Seco, said in a conference call, commenting on data released early in the morning.
This was particularly visible in the watchmaking sector, which presented an unemployment rate of 5.5%, up from 3% a year earlier. Weakening international demand, particularly in China and Hong Kong, weighed in, Lanzeray explained.
+ Get the most important Swiss news directly in your inbox
“In the coming months we will see a further slight increase in unemployment, mainly due to seasonal effects,” continued the expert, who pointed out that, moreover, the economic situation has also weakened. For the year as a whole, Seco forecasts an average unemployment rate of 2.4 %, a figure that will rise further to 2.6% in 2025. In 2023, the figure stood at 2%.
However, Seco’s unemployment figures do not take into account those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and are, for example, living on savings or on welfare. The indicators are based only on people who are actually registered with regional employment offices. The official Swiss definition of unemployment is therefore different from that of the International Labour Office (ILO), which operates through surveys and identifies people who are out of work, looking for a job and ready to be hired. According to the ILO, unemployment in Switzerland in the second quarter (latest available data) was significantly higher at 4%.
Adapted from Italian by DeepL/ac
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [email protected].
Tags: Featured,newsletter