Swiss migration office cuts jobs due to fewer asylum arrivals

Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans is in charge of the SEM. Keystone-SDA

The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) cut 83 asylum‑processing jobs at the start of the year due to a decline in new arrivals to Switzerland.

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SEM cut 60 jobs involved in processing asylum applications and 23 dealing with the processing of protection status S cases, it confirmed to the Keystone-SDA news agency on Saturday, following an earlier report by Blick.

The posts had been created temporarily to process the higher number of asylum applications and to reduce the number of open asylum applications, the SEM said.

“The personnel resources in the asylum sector were generally based on the number of asylum applications received, which were down last year. Last year and this year will probably be lower than 2022 to 2024,” SEM said.

Last year, SEM recorded 25,781 asylum applications, a decrease of 7% compared to 2024. At that time, 27,740 asylum applications were received in Switzerland and 30,223 in 2023. The federal government also expects fewer applications this year.

Pending asylum applications have recently been reduced by 45%, SEM confirmed. There are currently around 8,600.

The number of jobs at SEM rose steadily between 2021 and 2025 from 525 full-time positions to 762.

Adapted from German by AI/sb

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