The workforce of commuting workers who live in neighboring France, Germany, Italy, or Austria but work in Switzerland has grown by nearly 30% over the past 5 years.

There are currently nearly 250,000 foreigners working in Switzerland and living across the border in one of Switizerland’s neighboring countries.

In only the past year, the number of border workers with jobs in Switzerland has risen roughly 6%. Foreigners working in Switzerland but living across the border are hold ‘G’ permits to work in Switzerland.

According to the Federal Office of Statistics, the majority of these workers hold jobs in industry, though a sizable portion occupy jobs in banking or jobs in the luxury watch industry.

The strongest rise in workers living in neighboring countries and commuting to jobs in Switzerland was in the region around lake

Geneva, which rose nearly 60%, followed by the region around Zurich, which rose by 35%. In Ticino, the rise was nearly 30%.

The country distribution of these foreign workers has not changed appreciably in the five year period. Well over half live in France, with approximately 20% living in Italy, another 20% in Germany, and the remainder in Austria.

Foreigners who live in neighboring countries but commute to jobs in Switzerland hold ‘G’ permits. Any citizens from the European Community have a right to such a permit.

The number of such workers in Switzerland has shown a particularly steep rise (+40% from 2003-2008) in the tertiary sector, with the chemical industry showing strong increases (+20%) and medical instruments and precision optics and luxury watchmaking showing increases of roughly 20%.

Europeans also have the right to exercise an independent activity – that is, to be self-employed– in Switzerland. Geneva currently has approximately 500 self-employed professionals who live in Neighboring France. There are somewhere on the order of 100o non-resident independents working at jobs in Switzerland.

The workforce in Switzerland grew significantly in the first and second quarters of 2008. Switzerland is in particular need of wokers qualified in the building and construction fields and in Information Technology (I.T.).

The job market in Switzerland remains excellent and has even improved over the first two quarters of 2008, in spite of inflationary fears and worries over the general economy.

Job growth has been strong, there are generally more opportunities than qualified professionals to fill them, work in Switzerland continues to increase, pulling in experts from the surrounding EU countries and even globally.

According to a recent Manpower study, some sectors of the economy continue to show marked scarcities of qualified job seekers in Switzerland.

By contrast with the three months of last year, the workforce grew by

3% between January and march of 2008, to 4.5 million working professionals.

The strongest gains in annual job growth concerned the sectors of precision medical instruments and luxury watch making (which showed a gain of 7000 jobs, + 7.8%). Building and Construction also grew by 1.9% or 5700 jobs.

Health and Social Services also registered gains (+2.8% or 12,800 jobs) and services – particularly I.T. – rose 3.3% adding roughly 12,000 during the first quarter of the year.

In Switzerland, 36% of the 786 companies surveyed for the Manpower survey experienced problems recruiting qualified personnel. Our of 10 domains of activity affected by the scarcity of qualified professionals and educated work force, the economy lacks particularly qualified personnel in the building and construction industries – such as carpenters, electricians,… — as well as production workers and skilled technicians.

The lack of qualified technicians, particularly in the luxury watch making industries, such as micromechanics experts, constitutes a real threat to Swiss economic growth and future of work in Switzerland. Repercussions of the demographic changes in progress will aggravate further the current lack of qualified personnel in the coming years.

The report underlines the importance of professional training and continuing education, as well as facilitating the import and relocation of foreign professionals with key skills and talents in order to maintain the growth of Swiss industries and the quality of work in Switzerland.

Contrary to perception, many employees and executives are ready and willing to commit themselves more fully in their companies. A study from consultancy Towers Perrin, which sampled 86,000 employees in 18 countries and examined motivations showed several surprising results. Within the overall study, 1000 people were interviewed from Switzerland during the 2007-2008 period, coming from companies ranging from 250 to 10,000 employees across different sectors of the economy.

The first myth dispelled by the study was that the employee motivation is principally dependent on the attitudes of and the employee’s relationship to direct line management.

The study found rather that the general management culture and organizational factors were preponderantly important. When the general management of a company is sound and sets an example showing it is sincerely concerned with the well-being of employees, this has a very strong influence on employee commitment to work and

to the company. The study stresses that this is accomplished through acts and not by empty speeches.

In Switzerland, a major expectation of employees and executives was found to be management receptivity to new ideas, followed by a perceived influence on the decision making process in one’s domain of activity. In Switzerland, the perception of management preoccupation with employee’s well-being came in eighth place, behind such factors as rapid management reaction and clear management commitment to long term goals, reputation for financial stability and ability of management to elicit enthusiasm from staff.

The study grouped staff into 4 categories, from most committed to least committed. Switzerland had the highest rate of very committed staff (23% against 21% global average for the study). Switzerland also registered the highest rate of committed staff (50% against 41% for the global average). For Human Resources professionals its these two upper categories of ‘very committed’ and ‘committed’ on which they have to concentrate their efforts to retain and reinforce loyalty. The two lower categories of ‘disengaged’ and ‘very disengaged’ are considered as already lost by the HR professionals behind the study. HR services are advised not to spend excessive time on these two categories as much effort will wasted for few returns.

The study measured employee loyalty to the company by asking respondents if they intended to leave their current employment and if they were actively seeking another job. Among workers in Switzerland, the loyalty rate was very high: 38% of the employees polled had no intention of leaving their company, a figure much higher than the 33% global average. 37% responded that they were not looking to leave their job but would take into consideration another offer, for example from a headhunter. 11% responded that they were seeking another job.

The study points up to Swiss corporate Human Resources professionals that roughly half of employees working in Switzerland fall into the critical category of potentially leaving, lured by a more interesting opportunity elsewhere. Company HR needs to concentrate its attention on this pool to stave off exacerbated problems due to the penury of qualified personnel in Switzerland.

In Switzerland, the factors that explain the level of company loyalty are: satisfaction with and understand of company management decisions, possibilities for career development, and a good working relationship with the different departments within the company.

Another myth exploded by the study is that executives and workers in Switzerland are reluctant to devote themselves more to the company and are primarily motivated by salary. The study shows rather employees are ready to invest themselves more fully in a company if they feel a return for this investment, and that the return does not have to be financial, but can be in the form of vocational training or career advancement.

Proctor and Gamble has risen to become the 3rd largest employer in the canton of Geneva, responsible for more jobs in Geneva than any other company, except Migros and UBS. Specializing in beauty products, a sector showing strong growth over the past several years, Proctor and Gamble is a major actor offering work in Switzerland in the corporate world.

Last April in Geneva they had a recruitment event at their innovation center in Petit Lancy, where the manager of the Lacoste brand welcomed graduating students from across Europe and subjected them to a recruitment workshop in which they had to prove themselves by imagining a new ad campaign for the Brand to stimulate sales. The students were given the advice to take account of the diversity of the product line (casual T-shirts, dress shirts, perfumes,…) and to also consider how competing brands situate themselves –such as Armani or Calvin Klein — and were a set loose for the day with the admonition to be creative and generate enthusiasm.

Divided into roughly 15 groups, the students compete for the entire day, through their proposals and ideas, for the attention of Proctor and Gamble’s recruiters. The workshop/recruitment trial is also promoted as a means for students to get a close-up look at the Proctor and Gamble corporate environment and have an idea of their work in Geneva should they join the company.

The second day of the 2-day event, the students are individually interviewed and the Recruiting Director gives out scores for the two-day trial. Our of 420 candidates who applied for the event, 100 were invited and 20 will receive an offer of employment to work in Geneva at the Proctor and Gamble offices, the headquarters for the beauty products line.

When Proctor and Gamble opened its doors in Geneva in 1999, they started with 250 employees. There are currently, less than 10 years later, more than 2500.

According to a recent study by Manpower, Swiss employers in the Hotel and Restaurant Sector are highly optimistic for the period April-June 2008, for which they are predicting an increase in employment in Switzerland of 14%, considerably higher than last years hotel and restaurant industry jobs.

During the first quarter of 2008, the hotel and restaurant sector in Switzerland registered strong demand and created many new temporary jobs. The Manpower study said that for the 2nd quarter of 2008, the hotel and restaurant sectors would provide roughly 15% more work in Switzerland compared with last year. While 2007 was already an exceptional year, 2008 promises to show stronger growth in jobs in the hotel and restaurant businesses.

Despite the increase in jobs in hotels and restaurants in Switzerland, the salaries have not risen very much, and industry analysts are not expecting major increases in salaries any time soon.

So while the increase in jobs this hospitality sector may be good for the general economy, it does not appear to signal an increase in the standard of living of employees of restaurants and hotels. Recruitment among Swiss hotels and restaurants nonetheless remains very strong.

The current strong growth in jobs in hotels and restaurants in Switzerland contrasts with the general moroseness in the construction industry, which has stagnated.

Manpower, the author of the study, is a global company specializing in employment services and temporary workers and has sales of over $21 billion. The group is active in recruitment in Switzerland for the hotel and restaurant industries.

Recruiting agencies claim that January 2008 was still better than January 2007, with a major increase in jobs and open-ended permanent contract hires.

The watch making city of Chaux-de-Fonds in the canton of Neuchatel has too many jobs. Many of the jobs are taken by foreigners working in Switzerland and commuting from nearby France.

The economy of Chaux-de-Fonds, in the canton of Neuchatel, is booming, showing a 2007 growth of almost 5% in jobs for over the preceding year. In 2006, roughly 1000 new jobs were created in this small watchmaking town.

Currently there roughly 25,000 jobs in Chaux-de-Fonds, of which 6100 are in watchmaking.

Of the work in Switzerland, a substantial part of the jobs in Chaux-de-Fonds are taken by border workers (‘frontaliers’) – workers actually living in neighboring France who commute across the border to work in Switzerland. The practice engenders a certain amount of local hostility. Between 2006 and 2007, the number of commuters rose by more (about a 1000) than the increase in jobs.

The residents of Chaux-de-Fonds wonder whether their strong economy is profiting only workers living in neighboring France and coming across the border to work in Switzerland. The city president in charge of the economy (Socialist Laurent Kurth) organized recently a press conference to show that this perception is largely an exaggeration. He cited figures showing that the number of jobs occupied by border workers had risen by roughly 500, and that the rise was proportionally less steep than the increases noted from other regions of Neuchatel where there are higher concentrations of nonresident foreigners working in Switzerland.

in Chaux-de-Fonds, border workers hold 16% of the jobs, against 14.6% in 2006. Between 1990 and 2007, the number of commuters doubled, going from 5000 to 10,000. In the same time, border workers rose 80%. Their importance, according to city officials, has therefore declined. That fact, however, goes strongly against the perceptions of the resident population, who feel that jobs in

Switzerland are being squandered on nonresidents. Chaux-de-Fonds nonetheless is managing extremely well, despite numerous workers from neighboring France pouring across the border to take jobs in Switzerland. Over the past few years, the unemployment rate has continually decreased. As of February 2008, the jobless rate was roughly 4%. When one considers only the fields of highly educated professionals (biomedical, information systems, engineering, managerial…) there is too much work in Switzerland for the available supply of career professionals to assume the vacant jobs.

To deal with the ‘frontalier’ question, the authorities are trying instead to convince these border workers to move into the community of Chaux-de-Fonds. The population of Chaux-de-Fonds is currently about 37,000. In 1967 the population of Chaux-de-Fonds was 43,000. The tiny city has an image problem. From the rest of Neuchatel, the mountainous Chaux-de-Fonds are perceived as an austere industrial region with nasty winter weather. The city government is publishing a brochure enumerating all the advantages for a border worker working in Switzerland but currently living in neighboring France to entice him to move and establish himself in Chaux-de-Fonds. The brochure highlights the city’s quality of life, its amenities, and natural surroundings and high quality, inexpensive housing.

For a commuter living in Neuchatel, travel to work amounts to six full days of a year and costs 5640 francs. A border worker commuting from, say, Besançon, spends 29.5 days in his car per year and spends a total of 26,420 francs.

According to recruitment specialists, the current trend of work in Switzerland and the Swiss job marketplace is strong demand for profiles in administration, sales, and marketing.

Recruiters say that an apprenticeship in business studies is very good professional preparation for a career in Switzerland. The acquisition of language skills is also of key importance finding work in the job market in Switzerland which is multilingual and multicultural.

For any job in Switzerland English is a very important – often indispensable— skill.

In real estate and construction, in the insurance sector, and even more so in banking, from receptionists to financial directors, all work in Switzerland in the tertiary sector is experiencing a demand outstripping the available labor resources available on the local Swiss market and resulting in a situation of full employment and too many jobs for the available supply of workers.

Recruiting agencies claim that January 2008 was still better than January 2007, with a major increase in jobs and open-ended permanent contract hires.

The number of jobs in Switzerland is running ahead of the number of qualified professionals to the extent that recruiters are noting that companies are hiring temporary workers on a permanent basis (very profitable for placement agencies renting workers). Recruiters and employment agencies agree: Switzerland is currently in a period of full employment.

Recruiting specialists add that work in Switzerland is tending toward increasing specialization in job definitions and that certain trades are tending to disappear or reinvent themselves, notably those in the field of facilities management.

Construction in Switzerland is experiencing a substantial lack of qualified professionals and is attempting to attract more youths to enter the building industries, notably by trying to increase the number of students taking aprenticeships in construction and building trades.

It is difficult to know with exactitude the number of workers in the construction industry in Switzerland. Temporary jobs blur the statistics. The only certitude is that the number of jobs in construction and building in Switzerland is increasing continuously on the rising tide of a strong economy.

An inadequate supply of apprentices and newly trained workers in Switzerland has resulted in a shortage of labor and an increase in the average age of workers in construction. In Geneva and the canton of Vaud, economists are persuaded that the labor market is going to remain very tight with a surplus of jobs and companies continuing to have difficulty finding all the staff they need to fill their vacant jobs.

The hotel and restaurant industries continue to have difficulties recruiting enough qualified labor. In addition, the demands of the field are increasing, with more and more qualifications being looked for, such as varied experience and fluent English.

Finding work in Switzerland in the financial sector continues to be largely a question of choosing from among numerous offers in banking, finance, and insurance. The Swiss financial and banking sectors, as well as the insurance sector, continue to register record demand for top talent and qualified professionals.

Currently, CREDIT AGRICOLE is seeking to recruit a senior specialist in Raw Materials Financial Transaction to work in Geneva in support of their specialized clientele for energy trading, manage a small team, and build a portfolio of clients. The candidate should have a university degree and around 10 years of experience in international trading acquired in specialized institutions; an excellent knowledge of French is required, as is English and Russian. Interested persons should send their applications or inquiries to Direction des Ressources Humaines, / JP, CREDIT AGRICOLE (SUISSE) S.A., Case Postale 5260, 1211 Geneva 11, Switzerland. More information about the position is on their website at http://ca-suisse.com.

The proportion of work in Switzerland that is in the financial sector remains currently very high. LODH Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie is seeking to recruit a Specialist in Equity and Coupon Operations to work in Geneva in its department of Banking Operations. The new team member will treat equity and dividend payment operations, interest payments and reimbursements relating to the LODH group.

The professional who is engaged for this role will follow the reconciliation of transactions with LODH’s depositors and counterparty lenders. The person will also establish reportings in relation with the European taxation and will maintain contact with the Bank’s managers and traders. The person sought will have a business background (Ecole de Commerce, or CFC) and 3 – 5 years of banking experience in the domain of coupon payment; knowledge of European and American financial environments; mastery of French, English, and German is a plus. Interested candidates can apply through the website at http:// lodh.com/carrieres.

HSBC Private Bank is seeking to recruit a Premises Manager to work in Geneva and create and maintain a property strategy; acquire new surplus property on the best terms; minimize the ongoing cost of occupying property by negotiating rental commitments; ensuring the building fabric maintains asset value and a quality internal environment; ensure property revenue and capital budgets are controlled; contribute to global property issues affecting the Bank’s worldwide portfolio; and manage the regional/country portfolio in compliance with standards. The role requires someone who is a qualified general practice surveyor of minimum RICS standard with at least 5 years PQE or 10 years experience PQE for large businesses; experience with a broad range of property expertise; demonstrated strategic thinking; proven leadership with ability to motivate personnel and externals; good financial acumen; strong interpersonal skills. Interested candidates can apply to HSBC Private Bank, Quai Wilson 37, P.O. Box 3580, 1211 Geneva 3, Switzerland. The email is recruitment@hsbcpb.com.

The average hourly cost of labor working in Switzerland increased over the period 2004 – 2006.

Swiss labor costs remain among the highest in Europe, however the strengthening of the Euro has offset the competitive disadvantage of work in Switzerland.

The average hourly wage paid for salaried employees working in Switzerland over the period 2004 – 2006 was CHF 53.90, according to the Federal Office of Statistics (OFS) in Berne.

The OFS emphasized that the progression in labor costs resulted predominantly from the increase in salaries and bonuses paid by Swiss-based companies for higher qualified professionals working in Switzerland and also resulting from the reduction in the effective working hours. The statistic therefore reflects the increasing specialization in the Swiss economy.

However this generalization skirts around large variations in the

different branches of the Swiss economy. Employees in the sectors of insurance and banking are those costing the most to their employers, with an average remuneration of CHF 80.80 per hour. They present as well the most marked progression in compensation of work in Switzerland, with a rise of more than 12% over the past 2 years. At the other end of the scale, employers in the hotel and restaurant industries paid an average hourly wage of CHF 33.20 to their employees, which represents a rise of only 2.9% over 2004 and probably does not even offset the cost of living increases over that period. For clerical workers working in Switzerland, retail stores offered on average an hourly wage of CHF 46.45, an increase of 3.85%.

Between the extremes, teachers were among the better compensated, with an average hourly wage of 66.55%, ahead of public sector administration (CHF 63.85 / + 3%) and those working in the energy industries (CHF 63.15 / 4.15%). The sectors with the highest costs also have the highest demands for well-

qualified professionals working in Switzerland - unsurprisingly the high value-added sectors. In the construction industry, the average hourly salary is CHF 47.60 (+2.9%) and in the manufacturing industry CHF 52.25 (+3.6%).

Overall, it’s the financial services and banking sector which is pushing up the statistics. And the employees from the public sector did not really receive better increases workers in construction, and even less than teachers working in Switzerland.

In Switzerland, the average salary is composed of 83% remuneration directly received, 15% contributions for social security retirement and insurances (such as unemployment), and 1.6% other costs such as continuing education.

In order to compare Switzerland to the rest of Europe, these charges have to be converted into Euros. The OFS calculated that in 2006, the average hourly salary came out to be Euro 33.80, thus ahead of Sweden (Euro 32.15), Luxembourg (Euro 32), and France (Euro 30.30). Thanks to the strong rise of the Euro, the discrepancy between the costs of working in Switzerland and the surrounding EU countries was substantially reduced. It would appear that with respect to cost levels in 2002, Switzerland actually presents a cost reduction of roughly 1% due to exchange rate fluctuations.

Recent studies have called into question the linearity of remuneration and employee fidelity and motivation, indicating that relative status at the workplace is more importantthan absolute compensation in the minds of many professionals working in Switzerland.

In 2007, the Geneva-based multinational broke all earnings records, capping 7 years of growth and bumper years.

SGS is the number one player on the global market for inspection services and certification. Many of SGS’s clients are governments. Others are trading companies, banks and insurers.

The CEO of SGS, Chris Kirk, recently shared his thoughts with the media.

SGS had one of its best earnings years in 2007 and currently employs over 50,000 workers worldwide. Sales figures at SGS for 2007 were roughly $ 4 billion, with a net profit of about $500 million.

SGS expects continued growth, with as much as a 10% rise in their current sales figures for 2008. With the expectation of a recession in the US and its repercussions on global markets, Kirk noted that it was difficult to predict how 2008 would turn out.

SGS has very strong liquidity and is therefore positioned to take

advantage of opportunities for acquisitions as they present themselves in a falling market. SGS is particularly on the lookout for opportunities in geophysics, mineral extraction, oil and gas, and raw materials.

The management of SGS sees their profit per share attaining CHF 80. The management’s goal is to reach a profit of CHF 105 per share by 2011. SGS currently trades in the range of CHF 1400 – CHF 1450 per share.

SGS (as well as its smaller rival Cotecna Inspection) is one of Geneva’s largest employers. At this time, SGS Société Générale de Surveillance is currently seeking to recruit for Geneva:
a Junior Business Analyst for Geneva,
a Web Developer / Web Master
an International Legal Counsel
an intern Business Development Assistant
an apprentice “Apprentissage de Commerce”
and for Zurich:
a Consumer Testing Services (CTS) Manager.
SGS is also seeking to recruit two international positions - an Ivory Coast Automotive Manager for the Ivory Coast, and an Operations Manager, Forestry Monitoring Project for Liberia. Interested parties can write to departement des ressources humaines, SGS, Place des Alpes 1, 1211 Geneva 1 or go to their website at http://www.sgs.com.

In the beginning of 2008, the scarcity of qualified personnel for jobs in Switzerland has deepened.

Thousands of specialists for key jobs in Switzerland are lacking the fields of I.T., banking, medical services, trading, as well as mechanical engineering, construction, and the hotel industry.

I.T. specialists, watchmakers, engineers in the pharmaceutical industry, mechanics, or even nurses – professional qualifications are worth gold in Switzerland. Switzerland is currently experiencing its worst labor crisis in decades, with severe shortages of qualified personnel in several key sectors of the economy and a record number of unfilled jobs.

Charles Belaz of Manpower Switzerland say succinctly, ‘the labor market is, in effect, extremely tight.’

An executive at Adecco adds, In general, all professions are affected when it’s a question of looking for highly qualified candidates for jobs in Switzerland.

As a result, candidates currently have the upper hand in the process.

Top qualified candidates can choose between many possibilities say a recruiter with Curriculum SA, a company active in searching for qualified executives and professionals in service sector jobs in Geneva.

What are the professions and sectors the most affected ?

I.T. specialists are among the most hard to find and vigorously sought according to the administrators of some of the popular job recruitment websites in Switzerland.

“It’s not a new phenomenon,” notes Yves Fluckiger of the Employment Observatory, “but has simply become more and more serious with the expansion of the economy in the sectors of high technologies and information systems and communications.”

The shortage of candidates for jobs in Switzerland is made even more acute because so many large Swiss based companies are currently seeking to implement the same enterprise software systems like SAP and Oracle. And the I.T. field has also lost a lot of its luster in Switzerland over the past few years, attracting far fewer students in the Swiss universities.

Meanwhile, more and more multinationals are relocating to Switzerland for its infrastructure and its tax advantages.

The watch making industry is also hard hit by the shortage of qualified professionals – the situation is exacerbated by the explosion of the market for luxury watches. The Employment Observatory says the difficulties are of a structural nature: the Patronal Society of Watchmakers demonstrated that the expectations for current training of new professionals from now to 2010 will result in 2164 new watchmakers for the Swiss marketplace. While waiting for these future graduates to fill vacant jobs, the luxury watch companies must face the current labor shortage with recruitment abroad or hiring from the unemployment rolls.

Then there is nursing and the hotel industry. The demographic explosion in Switzerland has created a severe lack of nurses and paramedical personnel. The hotel industry has long suffered a lack of qualified professionals; the field is known for its low salaries and difficult working conditions.

The labor market is simply completely dry, according to Manpower executives in Switzerland, and notably in the domains of pharmaceutical, medical technologies, and I.T. specialties. Today, says Manpower, the only solution to filling jobs in Switzerland is to recruit outside of Switzerland.

The Swiss economy has made major strides in gender equality in the workplace, although some lacunae remain in comparison with other European countries.

In comparison to the Germans or the French, Swiss women retire more frequently from their professional careers when they have children, due to the difficulty of reconciling employment in Switzerland and family. Nonetheless, the discrepancies are far smaller than in the 90’s, when the phenomenon was far more marked.

Switzerland is one of the European countries where women are the most highly represented in professional careers – just behind Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, but ahead of Austria, Germany, France and Italy, according to a report published by the Swiss government statistics office (OFS). In 2005, 59% of women were working, against 49% in 1990. Switzerland is thus one of the countries where the difference between the rates of employment in Switzerland for men and women remains the most narrow.

The important role of women in the employment market is explained in large part by the amplitude of part-time work, according to the OFS. With 58%, Switzerland came in 2nd in 2004 for the percentage of women working half-time, just behind the Netherlands. If the rate of employment in Switzerland and its evolution reflects major progress in gender equality, the results should be somewhat put in perspective, says the OFS. While levels of professional employment in Switzerland remain constant for men, it declines among women between 30-40 years old, indicating that women put aside their careers for several years to handle family obligations, and they return to the labor market afterward. This behavior, according to the OFS, is unique to Switzerland (and Austria).

In Germany and France, on the other hand, employment for women does not decline with the approach of the thirties but stagnates for a few years, before rising again. The behavior is again different in the Mediterranean countries with a net, definitive, drop when women reach the age of starting a family.

In numerous European countries, women (and often men too) receive long maternity leaves and possibilities for nurseries and childcare which are less abundant in Switzerland. The limited possibilities for childcare and nurseries is one of the factors making it difficult for women to continue working and raise young children at the same time.

Large multinationals based in Switzerland are recruiting left and right. Numerous sectors are desperately seeking specialists.

Last year, prices of staples rose, oil skyrocketed, the American subprime crisis had financial repercussions in the banking and finance sector and the feeling in Europe was turning pessimistic.

Yet 2008 is kicking off to a strong start with the Swiss economy booming and indicators show it will continue to show strong growth with excessive demand for professional recruitment on the already stretched labor market. Attesting to the tight market jobs in Switzerland, the unemployment rate has sunk drastically and there are thousands of vacant posts for which companies are trying vainly to recruit qualified candidates.

A few examples : In the banking sector –and this in spite of the subprime crisis which has already cost CHF 15 and resulted in roughly 1500 jobs being axed—UBS is actually currently trying to recruit over 600 positions, essentially in portfolio management,

financial planning, client advising, and specialists (jurists, business developers, I.T., etc.).

The same is true at Credit Suisse where there are nearly 700 job openings. (Credit Suisse employs 20,000 people in Switzerland). The labor pool of qualified candidates has simply ‘dried up,’ according to many recruitment specialists in banking, finance, and I.T.

At Migros, there are 750 jobs openings, the highest number ever, and telecommunications giant Orange has job openings languishing for practically every type of profile –sales, logistics, I.T., marketing. Coop has nearly 150 job openings outstanding and ABB is seeking to recruit nearly 400 staff this year. Swisscom has 200+ job vacancies, Syngenta is trying to recruit over 200 new staff. 2007 was an exceptional year, with the employment market drawing in specialists from across Europe, but 2008 appears set to be even better for employees and an even worse Calvary for companies.

In the canton of Vaud, the chamber of commerce notes that more and more companies are being affected by increasing scarcity of qualified specialists. ‘It’s more and more difficult to find the professional staff we’re looking for,’ says the spokesman for ABB. Engineers, mechanics, electricians, watchmakers, portfolio managers, pharmaceutical specialists, financiers – there is a severe lack of specialists creating persistent job vacancies in Switzerland.

Enterprises are recruiting more and more abroad, particularly for high-level specialists and executives, according to the director of Adecco. Recruiters are making a lot of money, since they thrive in market conditions where qualified staff are rare and companies are desperate. In Zurich, the company MGF does much of its recruiting in Germany, France and Austria. According to a big headhunting firm in Geneva, there are many ads that get no responses at all.

Still another criminal complaint has been filed against the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as a new scandal breaks over the international organization which forms an important part of the United Nations landscape in Geneva and employs over a thousand staff.

A while back (see our archives) the Organization suffered a scandal over its Director —Kamil Idriss— who was belatedly discovered to have exercised excessive creativity in his curriculum vitae and was forced to discretely retire.

Now Mr. Idriss’ colleagues are in prosecutor’s crosshairs concerning strange paractices in the medical service of the Organization.

The Geneva public prosecutor has been called in concerning a criminal complaint for “fraud, swindling, accomplice to fraud, falsifying documents, falsification of medical certificates” and a raft of other charges. The complaints target the chief of the medical service at

WIPO, a certain Doctor N., a physiotherapist (Madame S.) and the Belgian insurance company Vanbreda.

The plaintiffs have accused the Organization of a series of abuses tolerated and sometimes even encouraged by WIPO’s director. The plaintiffs have cited cases of persons who were never part of WIPO but who were able to obtain health care benefits and reimbursements thanks to Dr. N. A member of the Soudanese mission was thusly able to fraudulently receive health benefits by using the insurance number of an ex-employee (the ex-Director General of WIPO, Kamil Idriss, is Soudanese).

This practice has apparently been frequent, in view of the multiplicity and diversity of testimony.

The investigations and prosecutions will notably have to examine as

well an alleged traffic in medicines and false prescriptions, as well as phony invoices. Plaintiffs discovered large quantities of products were ordered by an intermediary for the Medical Service of WIPO, without anyone’s knowing the final destination for the pharmaceuticals. In less polite circles, the term ‘drug trafficking’ tends to be employed.

Reached by phone recently, the chief of the Medical Service at WIPO claimed to be unaware of any complaint lodged against him or his service. He further claimed to the victim of bad rumors. “I have nothing to hide,” he added. “We doctors, we have an ethic and procedures. It’s very serious to make such allegations.” He went to add that he was extremely shocked to hear such unfounded accusations.

In their complaint, the WIPO employees repeat that N., who was previously working in Ferney-Voltaire (a French town bordering Geneva), was expelled from the local medical association for lapses in medical ethics, just before being fortuitously hired by WIPO’s then director Kamil Idriss.

In July, PWC noted other problems in a systemic audit of the organization, among them staff abuse of “flextime,” promotions and post reclassification based on length of service rather than merit, and the prevalence of managers who are not competent. WIPO employs over 1000 staff and has an attractive tower in downtown Geneva with a superb view of the lake and a top-floor restaurant. Job vacancies are routinely posted to their website at http://www.wipo.int

Recent remarks from the Swiss Banking Association point to another highly profitable year for the banking sector, with the notable exception of UBS, which was clobbered by the American subprime crisis and will actually post a loss for 2007. Overall, the Swiss banking sector continues to recruit heavily and is continuing to pressure the Swiss job market, pulling in the most qualified professionals in finance, I.T., analysis, and management. The month of December showed continuing demand across a range of skillsets.

A small selection of job offers in the local press is excerpted below.

LODH Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie is seeking to recruit a Specialist in Trust Accounting for its Global Custody department. The new team member will take responsibility for individual and consolidated financial statements and act as daily interlocutor for clients and bank services revolving around trusts. The role will participate in the operational management of clients of Global Custody.

The profile sought is a graduate of a Sales/Marketing curriculum –and Ecole de Commerce or CFC or equivalent—and at least 3 years experience in the domain of Trusts Accounting. A solid understanding of banking operations would be a plus. Mastery of English and French (written and oral) is required. The occupant of this Geneva-based job will also be expected to be domiciled in Switzerland. This sales / marketing job is appropriate for someone autonomous, flexible, service-oriented, and quick to adapt, with a strong sense of organization and ability to work under stress. Interested candidates should via the LODH website http://www.lombardodierdarierhentsch.com/en/Careers/Careers.html

BANQUE PIGUET & Cie, is seeking for Geneva recruitment a Relationship Manager for the service des Gérants Indépendants to
Execute, transmit and confirm orders received from independent portfolio managers working with the Bank. The role will also do administrative follow-up, and daily support for the portfolios of clients and financial markets.

The profile sought is an individual with solid banking knowledge of back-office (cash and stocks), experience in a similar role or with a group of independent portfolio managers, good familiarity with Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and spoken and written French and English. Spanish would be a big a plus. An ability to work well in a team and a rigorousm organized character are important to this role.

The Bank is also seeking to recruit an Advisor for Institutional Clientele responsible for the development of new relationships, supporting the follow up of existing institutional clientele and maintaining regular contact with the administrative councils of the various companies and institutions who are clients of the Bank. The role will also promote the sale of the Bank’s investment funds.

The profile sought is a service-oriented professional with experience in customer service in the domain of institutional funds management, a taste for interpersonal contacts and social grace, a strong orientation toward marketing, excellent taste in dress, and solid

familiarity with financial markets. Mastery of French and English is required, as is familiarity with MSOffice software.

Interested candidates for either position are invited to send their dossiers to: Ressources Humaines – réf; GI/INST, Banque Piquet & Cie, Place de l’Université 5, 1211 Geneva 3 Switzerland.

ACM Advanced Currency Markets is seeking to recruit an Experienced Forex Trader for recruitment in Geneva. ACM is the largest online Forex Broker in Europe and has a young, dynamic work environment. This Geneva job is for someone roughly in an age range of 20-30 and with at least 2 years of experience in Forex trading in a bank or financial institution. English mother tongue is a must, as our outstanding presentation and communication skills, a strong interest in the trading industry and ability to handle pressure. A perfect understanding of internet technologies is required.

ACM is also seeking a Compliance Officer for its Legal and Compliance department. The role will be responsible for the opening, follow-up, and management of accounts. The profile sought will be based in Geneva, Switzerland and be a specialist in procedures and regulations in the financial/banking sector, if possible with a jurist degree and banking experience, as well as familiarity with monitoring tools. The rough age range of the candidate they are seeking is 25-35 and a mastery of French and English is required for this job.

Interested candidates may apply by email to rjd@ic-markets.com or by mail to ACM Advanced Currency Markets, 50, rue du Rhone, CH 1204 Geneva, Switzerland.

Numerous large multinationals have recently moved into the Geneva area — among them Yahoo, Alibaba, Essent, Louis-Dreyfuss Trading, Electronic Arts—and settled into large office spaces or complexes. Inevitably, when multinationals set up large offices in Geneva (which has a population smaller than 500,000), the arrivals are preceded by months of work and negotiations by professional advisors.

One of the leaders in the French-speaking part of Switzerland (Romandie) in Real-estate advising to corporations, SPG Intercity, has organized the installation of numerous large corporate headquarters or major presences over the past few years. The CEO of the Geneva office, Martin Dunning, explained the logistics of how these large multinationals move in.

Multinational corporations seek out consultants like SPG Intercity to help them estimate their needs in terms of a site for the company’s operations, and the consultancy seeks an appropriate spot, maintaining the confidentiality of their client. The consultancy needs to know the local market very well and

know personally all the building management companies of the region (known as ‘Regies’) for optimal chances of success. The consultant then prepares a dossier with several propositions for the client.

For the client multinational, the language of the region is very important, but even more so the fiscal regime and corporate tax scales of the region. For example, in the Canton of vaud, local tax laws privilege incoming corporations if the local government deems them ‘positive’ for the local economy.

There are 26 cantons in Switzerland and 26 different sets of laws regulating commercial leases. For this reason, foreign corporations usually like to have a consultancy negotiate the rental or purchase contracts from price to contract signature. The consultancy is in a position to master all the local laws and their subtleties and is sometimes even mandated to take care of the interior design of the office space so that the client obtains office ‘ready-to-go.’

For the Nissan company which set up offices in Rolle (canton of Vaud), the SPG Intercity consultancy set up an architectural contest for the 5000 m2 office space.

Other consultancies handle such aspects finding lodgings for the company’s executives, finding appropriate schools for employees’ children, etc.

Built in 2001, Piaget is already enlarging its manufacturing plant in Plan-les-Ouates in Geneva, because its business is growing too fast. The current space cannot absorb the growth and an extension of an additional 850m2 is planned for summer 2008. This will no doubt translate into additional requirement for qualified staff across several hiring domains of luxury watch making.

In only 6 years the Piaget enterprise has grown considerably into a major manufacturing facility, according to Philippe Léopold-Metzger. Piaget is already a major employer in the Geneva area.

Piaget has ridden the wave of the boom in the emerging economies in which the nouveau riche have been purchasing luxury brands at an astounding pace.

Piaget is part of the Richemont group of brands and Richemont is experiencing a period of great profitability across all its brands. 2007 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for the company, which has

both luxury watch brands and jewelry brands.

Jewelry has become a veritable brand exercise, with companies already enjoying a legitimacy in this sector seeing their profits go through the roof.

This has proved a windfall for Piaget, which was already benefiting from the ebullient markets for luxury watches across the world.

The 5000m2 of space for thee Piaget Manufacture thus no longer can absorb the growth in staff resulting from the company’s expansion. There are already 360 staff working at the Geneva facility in Plan-les-Ouates and roughly 30 new jobs are created every year so far.

The new job profiles that will undoubtedly be sought once the extension is made next summer will be in the areas of product development, marketing, training, and technical fields in the production of watches and jewelry. The space additions will be largely attributed to office space (rather than workshop space).

The extension work has been going on for more than 3 months and coincides with another Piaget project going on at the rue du Rhone, where the company has its prestigious boutique. By spring time the Geneva boutique will be redone from top to bottom and furnished with an additional surface of 180m2 comprising notably a VIP salon. Piaget envisions also to install an audiovisual space retracing and displaying the creations of the over 40 trades encompassed by the Piaget company, employing thematic exhibits and presentation pieces from private collections.

Piaget’s spokesman says that in just a few years, their network of 51 boutiques has become an important source of growth.

Even the strong Euro seems to have had no effect on the growth of Switzerland luxury brands, and they continue to inundate the labor market with demands for top quality marketing, sales, branding, logistics, and technical professionals. Job seekers in such fields as watch making or jewel setting or branding strategy find a seller’s market for their skills on the Swiss job market.

Information systems professionals, I.T. specialists, and computer experts are becoming rarer and rarer in Switzerland, with a diminishing number of students choosing to go into information technology fields.

The number of students choosing I.T. has decreased by half over the last five years in the specialized Hautes Ecoles and universities.

Departures for retirement of I.T. professionals are not being replaced locally on the market by the educational institutions and greater demands are being placed on bringing foreigners with I.T. skills into the Swiss workforce.

Confronting this danger of severe scarcity of technical skills on the Swiss marketplace in key I.T. sectors, a number of public and private organizations are associating to try to generate interest among the youth in going into these professions.

Yesterday in Lausanne and Zurich the “Informatica 08″ conference presented the range of fields under Information Technologies and is trying to portray information technologies in the most romantic and desirable lights possible, demonstrating the diverse career opportunities available in Switzerland and attempting to attract gifted students. Daniel Borel, founder of Logitech is one of the well-known figures behind the initiative.

The initiative’s authors worry about the possibility of major companies leaving Switzerland because they cannot find the computer scientists and I.T. professionals they need. An increase in Outsourcing is also a result of the scarcity of I.T. people locally.

Young women represent a particular potential for recruitment. At present only 15% of I.T. specialists are women.

Concern has been steadily rising for several years about the growing scarcity of professionals in numerous technical fields. Initiatives have been enacted to facilitate immigration of foreign technical specialists. Integration with the EU has also helped ease shortages by opening access to Swiss labor markets to workers throughout the EU. Nonetheless, despite all these measures, for top qualified I.T. professionals, Switzerland remains a seller’s market top professionals and salaries continue to rise as companies compete for the limited resources on the market.

“I registered with a placement agency and signed a contract. What happens if I find a regular job as a result of this and the company they rent me to wants to hire me? Do I stay legally liable to the agency that rented me to the company in the first place?” Lionel, Geneva.

Temporary or Interim work has a special legal status in Switzerland.

In fact, the worker is bound by an employment contract to the agency which rents temporary workers to its enterprise clientele. And on the other hand, the worker is in no way bound to the actual company at which he is working who is renting the temporary staff from the agency, even though that is where he goes to work !

The Swiss federal laws governing temporary jobs in Switzerland - the rental of temp workers and what is referred to as ‘location de service’ – LES- or rental of services, governs this type of employment relationship. The LES delineates a certain number of measures that must be respected in this type of employment relationship.

First, the contract between the agency renting temporary workers and the worker must be in written form and contain, among other things, the type of work to be furnished, the length of engagement, and the working hours.

Accorsing to article 20 LES, if the company which is renting the services from the agency has a collective labor contract with its own permanent staff, the agency which is renting the services (workers) must apply the same working conditions (notably salary, working hours, and insurances) in force in the client company’s collective labor agreement.

Finally, the agency cannot by law prevent you taking a permanent job, concluding an employment contract directly with the client company if they decide to offer you regular employment.

Article 19 al. 5 letter b LES clearly stipulates that any clause which can prevent the employee / worker or create obstacles for the employee / worker from being employed by the client company – the ‘renter’ of the agency’s services – once the agency’s contract duration has ended, is null and void. The same holds true for any clauses concluded ; the company renting the temporary workers must be legally able to directly hire the worker at the end of the services contract.

According to leading economists and academics, the labor market is close to drying up and an influx of foreign workers will be necessary to mitigate the shortage of highly qualified professionals in Switzerland.

Professor Yves Fluckiger of the Employment Observatory spoke about the shortage of talent for the number of jobs in Switzerland at a conference yesterday in Lausanne, during which he highlighted the problem and proposed a variety of solutions.

The main sectors affected by the shortage of professionals are banking, finance, manual trades, and medicine, as well as several branches of I.T and telecoms. The situation has created an unusual number of job vacancies in Switzerland.

To understand the problem, one needs to analyze the supply and demand on the market as well as salary levels.

Over the past 10 years the evolution of demand from companies and employers has largely been determined by the economic climate and

by specialization of the economy, particularly in the tertiary sector. Switzerland has to a large extent opened up its job market to recruit qualified personnel for employment in Switzerland and the bilateral agreements with the European Union have created a certain migratory influx. Still, this has not been sufficient to meet the demand on the job market for recruitment in Switzerland of highly qualified staff in the key areas where shortages exist.

Swiss residents remain in the labor market beyond legal retirement age to greater extent than citizens of other European countries. The number of workers pursuing additional vocational or job training in Switzerland to update their skill sets is too small to meet the increasing demands of the market for new skills. Further, the brain drain toward large urban centers is progressing. Add to that the aging of the population and the lengthening of the period of time spent in studies, the practice of early retirement and phenomenon of part-time employment. There are not enough workers for the job vacancies in Switzerland.

Different policies need to put in place to deal with the shortages,

notably using more effectively local resources by lengthening the professional career (later retirements), raising the rate of employment among women, and the recruitment of specialists from around the world when necessary.

Further, another look at the modes of remuneration and pension plans, old age compensations and a better utilization of the pool of retired persons.

The debate examined as well the expansion of Swiss job training programs, continuing education, and changing or reorienting of career paths. Employers in Switzerland today place great value on professional experience acquired in a variety of jobs, whereas previously career advancement depended more on seniority and fidelity in the same position.

The result is a strong demand among Swiss employers for international candidates with a multilingual and multicultural background who have had a variety of professional experiences.