Author: switzerlandtimes.ch

Switzerland’s gender pay gap narrowed again in 2024. Women earned 15.7% less than men on average, down from 16.2% in 2022, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The unexplained difference narrowed to 6.5%. The trend is longstanding. Across the economy, including both the private and public sectors, the gap stood at 19.0% in 2018 and 18.0% in 2020. The figures are based on gross monthly wages standardised to a full-time workload. Part of the difference reflects observable characteristics of men and women in the labour market, including education, tenure and seniority. Men and women are not distributed evenly across…

Zurich’s cantonal parliament has backed a proposal to ban headscarves in public schools and kindergartens, instructing the cantonal government to draft legislation, reported SRF. The motion, proposed by the Swiss People’s Party (UDC/SVP), passed on Monday by 87 votes to 82, with six abstentions. It would prohibit female pupils and teachers from wearing religious head coverings in public educational institutions. The UDC/SVP cited France, where conspicuous religious symbols, including Islamic headscarves, have been banned in state schools since 2004. The motion claimed that the French policy had improved the integration and academic performance of Muslim girls. The proposal was supported…

A hot summer has shifted attitudes towards cooling. Swiss voters also favour stronger protections for workers and pupils when temperatures soar. Air conditioning remains uncommon in Switzerland. Only about one household in ten has it. But that may be changing.A survey by Leewas for 20 Minuten and Tamedia, conducted after the hot summer of 2026, found that 67% of respondents favoured wider installation of air-conditioning systems. Support for public subsidies, however, was much weaker: 67% opposed state funding for air conditioners in private homes. Men were more enthusiastic about air conditioning than women: 71% supported wider installation, compared with 63%…

Switzerland’s government is stepping up support for forestry and agriculture, two sectors hit particularly hard by drought and extreme heat. On Wednesday the Federal Council approved CHF 17.5m for forests and CHF 54m for farms. Switzerland is enduring an exceptional drought. Never before has the country recorded so little rainfall by mid-August, Albert Rösti, the environment minister, told reporters in Bern. The duration of the dry spell, he said, is putting pressure on vulnerable people, livestock, waterways, ecosystems, forests, farming, power generation and river transport. The government is therefore taking short- and medium-term measures in forestry and agriculture, arguing that…

Revoking Swiss citizenship requires compelling grounds. Support for terrorism can provide them. Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court has now upheld denaturalisation in an unusual case, reported SRF. The case concerns a 36-year-old man who was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and became a naturalised Swiss citizen as a child. Five years ago a French court sentenced him to several years in prison for helping to prepare terrorist acts. He had run propaganda channels for Islamic State (IS) and recruited new members for the group. Soon after the French judgment, Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) began proceedings of its own. In…

Asked what sort of country they would like to live in, the Swiss favour nature, local production and personal freedom—and are distinctly cool on a future run by artificial intelligence. Futurologists tend to be more interested in what is new than in what works. The Swiss, it seems, are less drawn to novelty. A new survey by Monda Futura, a Swiss non-profit group, asked people not what they feared about the future but what sort of future they could live with. Its Schweizer Zukunftskompass 2026 combines ideas gathered from more than 1,300 participants with a representative survey of 2,203 people…

Switzerland’s economy grew by 1.6% in real terms in 2025, compared with 1.5% in 2024. The broadly steady pace of expansion was driven mainly by strong domestic demand, which rose by 2.5%. Investment was particularly buoyant, increasing by 3.5%, reported the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The 2025 figure is slightly below Switzerland’s recent long-run norm. Annual real GDP growth from 2005 to 2024, Switzerland grew by about 2.0% a year on average. The period includes the global financial crisis, the pandemic recession and the strong post-pandemic rebound. Gross national income (GNI), measured at current prices, rose by 2.5%, helped by…

Unemployment among graduates from Swiss universities and universities of applied sciences increased between 2023 and 2025, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). One year after graduation, the unemployment rate as defined by the International Labour Organisation rose from 3.9% to 6.4% among holders of a university master’s degree, and from 3.4% to 4.9% among graduates with a bachelor’s degree from a university of applied sciences. By contrast, the rate among graduates of teacher-training universities remained low, at 0.7%.The figures come from the FSO’s survey of higher-education graduates, published on August 27th 2026. As with the class of 2022, unemployment…

Employment in Switzerland continued to rise in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Statistical Office. Most of the new jobs were in services, while the number of vacancies was also higher than a year earlier. At the end of June, companies outside agriculture employed 5.698m people. Of these, 2.388m worked part-time. Women accounted for 68.2% of part-time workers. On a full-time-equivalent basis, employment amounted to 4.435m jobs, up by 82,700, or 1.9%, from a year earlier. Women accounted for 40.5% of full-time-equivalent employment. Overall employment rose by 111,800 jobs, or 2%, year on year. Women made up…

Switzerland and China have concluded negotiations on an upgraded trade agreement that would remove tariffs on almost all Swiss exports to China. Guy Parmelin, Switzerland’s economy minister, and Wang Wentao, his Chinese counterpart, announced the deal on Thursday. Under the revised agreement, 99.8% of current Swiss exports to China would eventually be exempt from customs duties, the Swiss government said. Bern estimates that Swiss exporters could save around CHF 244m a year. Roughly three-quarters of the new tariff exemptions would take effect as soon as the agreement entered into force. Mr Parmelin and Mr Wang signed a memorandum of understanding…