by Jean-Michel Berthoud, swissinfo.ch

Youth unemployment is a major problem in Europe: in the European Union over 20 per cent of under-25s are affected, and in Spain and Greece it’s more than half. Yet in Switzerland it is just over three per cent.

Switzerland has had a good economic outlook, with employment on the rise, both before and just after the financial crisis. “And when employment rises, it is usually young people who benefit,” explained Serge Gaillard, of the State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (Seco).

But that is just a short-term factor, Gaillard, Seco’s head of labour directorate, told swissinfo.ch.

“In the long term, our dual education system – parallel training on the job and in vocational school – is one of our major strengths. Two thirds of young people in Switzerland already start work at 16 or 17 and combine practical experience with classroom instruction. This system has worked well. Countries with this kind of dual education system tend to have lower rates of youth unemployment.”

Too many graduates

Sociologist Karl Haltiner, the academic director of Federal Youth Surveys, it is significant too that in Switzerland the difference in prestige between practical apprenticeships and secondary education is not very great, unlike in countries of southern Europe.

“Although the number of young people going to university is rising in this country too, we are still far from the situation in Italy where almost 30 per cent of people are university graduates,” he told swissinfo.ch.

A large number of these graduates later have to compete in a labour market which cannot absorb a lot of them. They are then forced to look for less qualified work “in order to find anything at all”.

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People entering an unemployment office in Madrid (Keystone)