Is long-term unemployment being underestimated?

Many long-term unemployed Swiss don't register with their regional labour offices. Keystone

According to a Sunday analysis in Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag, long-term unemployment could be much higher than previously thought due to the way labour statistics are calculated in Switzerland.

The Schweiz am Sonntag reported that some 90,000 people in Switzerland have been searching for a job for longer than one year –  which is 80% more than there were during the financial crisis of 2008.

In an interview with the German-language paper, Michael Siegenthaler, an economist at the KOF Economic Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) asserted that long-term unemployment has in fact hit a record high in Switzerland – without the public being aware.

Officially, the Swiss unemployment rate is 3.2% according to figures from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). But according to Siegenthaler, “many unemployed people are not counted”.

The economist pointed out that only people who register at regional labour offices are counted by authorities in unemployment figures. But this often does not include people who have been unemployed long-term since “many do not register [at regional labour offices] because they are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits,” Siegenthaler said.

The paper concluded that based on this analysis, official figures could be missing some 40,000 unemployed people in Switzerland.

According to Siegenthaler, the Swiss unemployment rate as calculated by the International Labour Organization (ILO) – 4.5% – is much more accurate, as it better accounts for the nation’s long-term unemployed people.