Unemployment Rate

The Swiss unemployment rate is the registered rate in the Labour Directorate (SECO) monthly labour market report, running since 1993. It is a monthly census (full count, not a sample) in the AVAM system, counted on the last day of the month. It counts RAV/ORP regional centre registrants with no job and immediate availability, full-time and part-time alike, regardless of benefit receipt. The base is the labour force, including diplomats; employed or unavailable registrants in programmes, retraining, interim earnings, sickness, service or notice are excluded.

Registrations are counted through month-end, with the last day of the month as the reference day. The report for month M appears within 10 days of month M+1, in French, German and Italian, at 06:45 GMT. Each release shows the headline rate with cantonal tables and breakdowns by industry (NOGA 2008), occupation (CH-ISCO-19), age, vacancies and time series. Provisional short-time and exhaustion figures lag 2 months for payment reasons; the base updates every 3 years and adjusted values are recalculated monthly in italics.

The rate moves only with the registered unemployed count, but these published parts explain the shift.

• Registered unemployed: the only headline input, covering people with no job and immediate availability.
• Age groups: youth (15 to 24, most sensitive) and older workers (50 to 64, structural).
• Long-term unemployed: people jobless for over 1 year, gauging persistence.
• Registered jobseekers: the broader gauge, adding non-unemployed registrants in programmes or interim earnings.
• Reported vacancies: the demand side, counting open posts including mandatory-reporting occupations above 5% unemployment.
• Short-time work and exhaustions: the early-warning buffer of people, firms and lost hours before layoffs, plus benefit exhaustions as hardship outflow.

The 9 January 2024 release for December 2023 showed 106,859 unemployed, up 8,848 (+9.0%) on the month. The rate rose from 2.1% in November to 2.3%, up 9,918 (+10.2%) on the year. The adjusted rate moved only from 1.9% to 2.2% through 2023, while the 2023 average of 2.0% was the lowest since 2001 at 93,536. Youth, older seekers and jobseekers rose as vacancies fell, since winter seasonality lifts raw counts and traders watch both rates.

1. Registered unemployed: Count RAV registrants on the last day of the month with no job and immediate availability, regardless of benefits. The count comes from AVAM (the placement-service IT system).
2. Labour force: Take employed people (working at least 1 hour weekly) plus unemployed people, fixed between updates. The base uses 4,597,259 people from 2018 to 2020 pooling (combined samples).
3. Headline rate: Divide registered unemployed by the labour force and multiply by 100, to 1 decimal. For example, 106,859 divided by 4,597,259 times 100 rounds to 2.3% in December 2023.
4. Exceptions and adjustment: For industries and occupations, divide by employed people, not the labour force. The X-13 procedure removes seasonal patterns and recalculates the full series monthly, shown in italics.