Swiss social welfare drops for people from non-EU countries

Third-country nationals who had entered Switzerland for “work or education purposes” since 2008 were almost never dependent on social welfare support in 2022 (0.2%). Keystone / Christian Beutler

In Switzerland, 6.7% of the 669,100 people from third countries received social assistance in 2022. This figure has fallen slightly by 0.5 percentage points compared to the previous year. From 2015 to 2017, it was around 8.5%.

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Some 44,900 people from third countries received social welfare in 2022, as reported by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SEM) on Wednesday. This amounts to a social assistance rate of 6.7%.

The social assistance rate of people from third countries is significantly higher than that of people from European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries living in Switzerland (2.3%). The rate for Swiss nationals is 1.9%.

Almost half from Europe

Most of the people from third countries came from European countries that do not belong to the EU or EFTA (42.8%), followed by people from Africa (26.2%), Asia (19.9%) and the Americas (10.8%). Some 56% of them had a settlement permit and 42.8% had a residence permit.

Some 28.1% were couples with one or more children, 27.3% were single parents, 25.8% were living alone, and 9.1% were couples.

Third-country nationals who had entered Switzerland for “work or education purposes” since 2008 were almost never dependent on social welfare support in 2022 (0.2%).

In contrast, the rate for people who came as part of a family reunion was 5.3%. Overall, women have a higher risk of social welfare assistance (5.7%) than men (4.5%), especially those up to the age of 54.

The social welfare rate for third-country nationals without an asylum background was 5.6%, while it was 18.4% for people with an asylum background.

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

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