Unemployment continues to fall in Switzerland, standing at 2.9 per cent in May – 114,684 people - down by 24.1 per cent over the same month last year.
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In April the figure was 3.1 per cent, said the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), in a statement issued on Wednesday.
Unemployment among young people – aged between 15 and 24 – dropped by 11.5 per cent from April, to 14,801. Compared with May 2010 it was down by 34.3 per cent.
French and Italian-speaking cantons experienced the biggest drops in jobless figures: Jura, Neuchâtel and Ticino unemployment fell by 0.4 per cent compared with April.
Appenzell Inner-Rhodes had the lowest unemployment rate with 0.6 per cent.
In Geneva, which had the highest rate, unemployment stood at 6.6 per cent, down 1.1 per cent on May 2010.
In another statement released on Wednesday, Seco said short-time working during the recession of the past two years had made it possible to hold down unemployment rates, and enabled companies to keep employees who had then played an important role in the recovery.
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