Understanding Swiss Work Permit Quotas

Are you preparing to move soon to Zurich, Bern, Geneva or another Swiss international hotspot?

Expat life in Switzerland has much to offer and provides a great intercultural experience—from discovering the countryside, like the mountainous resort of Zermatt; to learning how Swiss people celebrate the Swiss National Day; to savouring Switzerland’s legendary dishes, such as Rösti or Raclette.

However, no matter how attractive all this can be, it is important to know that from an immigration perspective, obtaining a work or residence permit in Switzerland can be tricky without a basic knowledge on how the Swiss immigration system works.

In this blog, I will approach a recurring topic related to Swiss Immigration: work permit quotas. Simply put, quotas limit the access to the Swiss employment market for foreign nationals. .

As a general rule, if you want to work and live in Switzerland for more than four months, you need to apply for a permit, which is in essence, a quota permit (except for EU 27 /EEA on local employment). Depending on your nationality there are two types of quota permits: short-term L permits and long-term B permits.

As of January 1, 2018, the Swiss Federal Council released a number of L (4,500) and B (3,500) permits for non-EU nationals, which are divided between the Cantons and the Federal Authority. On the last statistic published by the State Secretariat for Migration, at the end of May 2018, the Swiss Federal Reserve still had 1,279 B permits and 2,561 L permits available (also including the previous years’ reserve). The total remaining cantonal stock at the end of May 2018 amounted to 742 B permits and 972 L permits.

Read more in this alert.