contents
According to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), the Swiss labor market experienced a strong recovery last year – despite the pandemic. According to Seco, the extension of the daily allowances covered by unemployment insurance (ALV) played a decisive role.
Extension of the daily allowance prevented many dislocations
Many lost their jobs in the pandemic. At the same time, the companies imposed a hiring freeze. A disparity that did nothing to improve job prospects for the unemployed.
To counter this problem, Parliament passed an amendment to the Covid-19 law on March 19, 2021, which would allow people insured by the unemployment insurance fund to receive 66 additional daily allowances between March and May 2021. In addition, the subscription period was extended. Measures that had already been implemented in the first year of the pandemic (120 additional daily allowances in 2020).
As a result, people got more time to continue their job search and this prevented massive amounts of control.
For Boris Zürcher, Head of the Labor Directorate at Seco, the extension of daily allowances and the associated protection for the unemployed played a major role in the rapid recovery of the labor market: “It gave people more time to continue their job search, and this resulted in massive amounts of control prevented. ”
The entitlement to unemployment benefits ends with the control, without it being possible to return to work. Zürcher does not dare to quantify how many controls were actually avoided by the measure, but: “The fact is that in 2020 about half as many people were removed as in 2019. And that is mainly due to the additional daily allowances.”
The unemployed need a certain amount of pressure
Another advantage of the additional daily allowances according to Seco: A reduced burden on social assistance. Because a certain proportion of the ostracized ends up in social welfare. By extending the daily allowance, this share has also been drastically reduced in the past two years, says Zürcher.
Even if it is controversial when I say this: It takes a certain amount of pressure.
So why not just introduce a pandemic-independent extension of the daily allowance and thus permanently relieve the social security organizations? A change in the law would theoretically make this possible. Providing a permanent pension is not the point of unemployment insurance, says Zürcher. And for a person’s unemployment to remain as temporary a phenomenon as possible, a certain amount of pressure is needed.