Blog Post

Anyone hunting for Switzerland shortage jobs should know one thing first: Switzerland does not publish a shortage occupation list for immigration purposes. The one occupation list the federal authorities do publish works in the opposite direction.

What actually governs admission from outside the EU and EFTA is a quota, a priority rule and a qualification test. Those three are the subject of this page.

The quota, and how little of it gets used

Switzerland caps admissions from outside the EU and EFTA every year. The Federal Council left the 2026 numbers unchanged when it decided on 19 November 2025:

Read the last column again. The headline number sounds restrictive, 8,500 permits for the entire non-European world, and in practice around half of it goes unused; in 2024 the figure was 74 per cent used, so the slack is real and growing. The quota is rarely what stops an application.

The UK row is worth a second look if you hold a British passport. Switzerland kept a dedicated post-Brexit quota of 3,500 permits and more than four fifths of it sat unused. That is an open lane very few people are driving in.

What actually stops applications

Two tests, and they bind far harder than the quota:

1. The priority rule. The employer must show that recruiting a Swiss, EU or EFTA worker was unsuccessful. With free movement across the whole of Europe, that is a large pool to have exhausted.
2. The qualified specialist test. Admission is for managers, specialists and other qualified workers, which in practice means a degree or completed professional training plus several years of relevant experience. There is no unskilled route.

Pay and conditions must also match local norms for the role and the canton, which is a protection rather than an obstacle: it stops the route being used to undercut, and it means a Swiss offer is a Swiss salary. The State Secretariat for Migration sets out the admission rules.

The official list, and why it is the wrong way round

Switzerland does publish an occupation list, under the job registration requirement, the Stellenmeldepflicht. The sole criterion is unemployment: an occupation is listed when its unemployment rate reaches 5 per cent or more.

Listed vacancies must be reported to the public employment service and held for registered job-seekers before they can be advertised openly. So an occupation appearing on the official Swiss list is a signal that hiring you will be harder, not easier.

It is also expanding. The obligation covered 6.5 per cent of employed persons in 2025 and 10.8 per cent in 2026, as hospitality, several construction trades, retail and administrative support crossed the threshold. The largest single occupation covered is unskilled construction work, at over 88,000 workers. Office and hotel cleaning came in at 5.3 per cent. SECO publishes the current list and a checking tool.

Where the shortages genuinely are

The credible ranking is the Swiss Skills Shortage Index, published by the Adecco Group with the University of Zurich’s Swiss Job Market Monitor. It is private research rather than policy, which is exactly why it is honest about the labour market rather than about politics. Four areas are structurally short:

• Healthcare, at the top of the ranking: specialist doctors, qualified nursing staff and pharmacists. Ageing is pushing this one further every year.
• Construction site leadership, meaning site managers and supervisors rather than labourers, which is the same distinction the registration list draws from the other side.
• Technical and engineering roles.
• Electrotechnics, driven by building services and infrastructure work.

The index is published openly. If you are in one of those four and hold a recognised qualification, you are the applicant the quota was designed for. See countries that need nurses for how Switzerland compares.

What to do

1. Stop looking for the list. It does not exist for immigration, and the one that does exist counts against you.
2. Check yourself against the qualified specialist test before anything else: qualification plus several years of relevant experience.
3. Target healthcare, engineering, electrotechnics or site management, where the shortage is structural and an employer can evidence the priority rule honestly.
4. If you are British, use the UK quota. It is separate, it is large, and it is 83 per cent unused.
5. Get the qualification recognised early. It is what the specialist test turns on.

Related: 15 European routes compared, moving to Austria as a non-EU resident and German bottleneck professions. Browse Swiss and European shortage jobs with visa sponsorship on our board.

Last checked September 2026. Swiss quotas are set annually by the Federal Council and the job registration list is revised each year. Confirm both with the State Secretariat for Migration and SECO before relying on them.