Around 3.6 million people in Switzerland commute to work
Published: Friday, Jan 26th 2024, 10:51
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In 2022, around 3.6 million people in Switzerland commuted to work. Of these, 71% worked outside their municipality of residence, as the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported on Friday.
In 1990, the figure was 13 percent lower at 58 percent (2.9 million commuters).
The FSO defines commuters as employed persons aged 15 and over who have a fixed place of work outside their home. Commuters therefore do not include people who work at home or employed persons who do not have a fixed place of work.
In general, commuter flows connect Switzerland's major cities along the central axis from Zurich to Geneva. A comparison of the cantons showed that Basel-Stadt and Zug attracted the most commuters from other cantons in 2022 in relation to their size, as the FSO also reported.
In the year of the survey, commuters in Switzerland covered an average of 14 kilometers per journey to work (one way). According to the FSO, it took them an average of 30 minutes to get to work.
Training commuters travel longer distances
At 50 percent, half of commuters used the car as their main means of transportation to work. 29 percent traveled to work by public transport, 16 percent of them by train. 18 percent walked or cycled to work.
In addition to work commuters, there were around 0.7 million education commuters aged 15 and over (school pupils, apprentices, students) in Switzerland in 2022. According to the FSO, they traveled an average of 20 kilometers to get to their place of education.
They preferred to use public transport to get to their place of education: rail and public road transport together accounted for 68 percent of the main means of transportation in 2022.
©Keystone/SDA
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