Switzerland's unemployment rate is likely to exceed 5 percent as the impact of the global crisis on the economy intensifies, a senior Swiss Employers Confederation official was quoted as saying on Saturday. "The dramatic slump on world markets will continue to have a negative effect on employment in Switzerland for some time," executive secretary Thomas Daum told the Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft.
"We must therefore unfortunately assume that the unemployment rate will rise well over 5 percent," he said without giving a timeframe. Daum noted that the jobless rate had reached that level in the 1990s during a much weaker reduction in gross domestic product.
The newspaper said Daum's forecast meant the number of unemployed in Switzerland would exceed 200,000. The unadjusted unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7 percent in July, taking the total number of jobless to 145,364, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said on August 7.
Daum said it was too soon to say whether positive data from other countries, notably unexpected growth in Germany and France, signalled a turning point for Switzerland too, while the positive data were from a low base. "It will take some time yet before they result in marked upward impulses for the Swiss economy via exports," he said. The Alpine economy slipped into recession in the middle of last year and the Swiss central bank expects a decline in gross domestic product of up to 3 percent in 2009, which would be the worst fall since 1975.
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