State Secretariat for Migration cuts over 100 jobs again
Keystone-SDA
The Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) has announced it is cutting 108 jobs. Some of these were financed on a temporary basis, while other positions will fall victim to cost-cutting measures.
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The majority of the jobs that have been cut are temporary positions – these were awarded to the SEM on a temporary basis “in order to reduce the pending issues in the area of asylum”, the SEM announced on Sunday in response to an enquiry from the Keystone-SDA news agency. As the reduction would be completed in a few months, the SEM would now have to “return” these posts.
As a result of the relief package put together by the federal government and Parliament, individual permanent positions will also be cut, as the SEM confirmed a report in the Sonntags-Blick newspaper. The jobs that would have to be cut as a result of this and due to higher average personnel costs will be distributed across the entire State Secretariat.
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Asylum applications in Switzerland expected to drop in 2026
The job cuts are to be implemented at the beginning of 2027. The employees affected are to be informed in June.
After the reduction, the SEM will still have around 1,280 full-time positions in 2027. The SEM had already cut 83 jobs at the beginning of 2026.
At the end of March, the State Secretariat for Migration wrote: “Personnel resources in the asylum sector are generally based on the number of asylum applications received”. There were fewer of these in 2025. The SEM is also expecting fewer applications this year than in the years 2022 to 2024.
Pending asylum applications were recently reduced by 45%, as the authority announced at the end of March. At that time, around 8,600 asylum applications were still pending.
Translated from German by AI/jdp
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