Living in Switzerland

Switzerland pays about as well as anywhere on earth, and even against its famously high prices a salary here leaves real room to get ahead and save. Tax is light enough that most of what you earn stays with you. The catch is the door. Without a local network or local track record the first job is genuinely hard to land, and the way in tends to run through science, IT, and engineering, where English carries weight it doesn't hold across the rest of the working day.

Switzerland is among Europe's most immigrant-shaped societies. About 2.4M residents — 26% of the population — were born abroad, drawn heavily from neighboring countries, led by 371.8K from Germany, followed by Italy and Portugal. The foreign-born population has grown 20% over the decade. Departures are far smaller, with about 513,000 Swiss living abroad, leaving the country a strong net destination.