Tag Archives: Business & Economy

In 2021, Switzerland had the highest innovation score in Europe, according to a report published by the European Commission this week. © Diego Grandi | Dreamstime.comSwitzerland’s innovation score of 162.3 put it comfortably ahead of Sweden (156.5), the European nation in second place. The score measures innovation across 12 areas, which include workforce education, research systems (international research publications), digitalisation, finance and support, investment, use of IT,...

Over the weekend, a majority of voters in the canton of Basel-City voted in favour of a minimum wage of CHF 21 (US$ 23) an hour. © Andreadonetti | Dreamstime.comThe move will make Basel-City the first German-speaking Swiss canton to adopt a minimum wage, following in the footsteps of Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura and Ticino. Until fairly recently Switzerland had no minimum wages. In 2011, voters in Neuchâtel voted in favour of a minimum wage, which was introduced in 2017. Jura followed with...

On 13 June 2021, Swiss voters will decide on whether to accept a government plan to raise taxes on certain high emission activities, which include additional taxes on heating oil, flights and petrol and diesel for road use. © Heiko Kueverling | Dreamstime.comThe aim of the revised law is to change behaviour and reduce Switzerland’s emissions. The amount that the proposed taxes would cost an average family range from around CHF 100 to CHF 1,000 depending on who is calculating it. In...

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. © Rafael Ben Ari | Dreamstime.com 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 have exhausted their rights to collect unemployment benefits. Many measures of unemployment, such as the one recommended by the...

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. © Rafael Ben Ari | Dreamstime.comThe 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 have exhausted their rights to collect unemployment benefits. Many measures of unemployment, such as the one recommended by the International Labour...

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 NZZ am Sonntag Parmelin said that the EU would harm itself if it sank trade relations with one of its most important trading...

The total number of hours worked in Switzerland in 2020 dropped by nearly 4% compared to 2019, announced the Federal Statistical Office this week. © Thanasak Boonchoong | Dreamstime.comIn 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 work were clocked up in Switzerland. In 2020, this figure fell to 7.6 billion. Unsurprisingly, the biggest falls in hours...

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 be true. © Alexander Filon | Dreamstime.comA recent poll run by gfs.bern found that 64% of a sample of voters were either supportive (15%) or fairly supportive (49%) of the...

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. © Jan Gajdosik | Dreamstime.comThese figures do not include the effects of the pandemic beyond the end of 2020 and therefore exclude the impact of the pandemic in 2021. Casimir Platzer, president of GastroSuisse, told newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland, that an additional 10,000 jobs...

Consumer sentiment among Swiss households is improving, according to Switzerland’s economic affairs office (SECO). © Rosaria De Marco | Dreamstime.comIn 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 of -5. The primary reason for the rise in consumer sentiment is a significant improvement in expectations regarding general...