Ten fascinating Swiss statistics

August 14, 2014, 3 Comments

One suicide every 8.5 hours is a Swiss statistic you don’t often see. The most used train network in the world is one you do. Switzerland is actually full of stats, covering public transport, private life and everything in between. Last month I visted the Federal Statistical Office in Neuchatel and picked up some of the fascinating free booklets packed with the lastest facts & figures.

One had the alarming title of “Statistics from the Aliens and Asylum Sector”, which has nothing to do with ET but plenty about foreigners (or “Aliens”) living in Switzerland. But those stats appear far too frequently in the press, so instead I have chosen ten that don’t often see the light of day, all taken from the official “Statistical Data on Switzerland 2014”. That used the latest data available, which can also be found on the FSO website.

• 20.2% of children born in Switzerland were born to unmarried parents
• one person dies on Swiss roads every 33 hours
• 59.8% of accommodation is rented
• half of all jobs in Switzerland are with companies with fewer than 50 employees
• 19% of workers are employed outside their canton of residence
• German-speakers listen to more radio than average but Italian-speakers watch more television
• 55% of criminal cases under the Narcotics Act were by offenders with Swiss nationality
• there were 1034 suicides in Switzerland, three quarters of them men
• 82% of Swiss households have a dishwasher
• Germany is the most common destination for Swiss tourists abroad

And of course, not forgetting the train usage figure: 2307km per person per year, well ahead of Japan in second place with 1912km.

As for those aliens, one fifth of foreigners living here for more than 12 months were born in Switzerland. They don’t sound very alien to me.