How long does Swiss unemployment benefit last? Daily allowances, the two-year frame, and what happens after

Entitlement: daily allowances by contribution period and age

Under AVIG art. 27. The count applies per two-year framework period; your RAV calculates the individual case. As of 7 September 2026.

Two clocks, rarely running at the same speed

The qualifying frame for drawing benefit starts on the first day for which every eligibility condition under Art. 8 AVIG is met and runs for two years (Art. 9 paras. 1 and 2 AVIG). A second frame runs backwards from that same day: the contribution frame covers the two years before it (Art. 9 para. 3 AVIG), and it decides how many contribution months you can produce at all.

Because five allowances are paid per week, 520 allowances fill the two-year window almost exactly, and 260 fill half of it. That is design, not coincidence. Twelve months of contributions buy roughly twelve months of cover.

The consequence surprises people who find work and lose it again. Take a job after eight months of unemployment, lose it three months later, and you re-register into the same running frame with the same remaining balance. Three months of work did not reset anything. New two-year frames open only once the old frame has expired and you claim benefit again (Art. 9 para. 4 AVIG).

Days that leave the counter without paying you

The expensive ones are suspension days. Art. 30 para. 3 AVIG says two things in two sentences: a suspension applies only to days on which you actually meet the eligibility conditions, and it is charged against the maximum number of allowances under Art. 27. A suspension day is a spent day, not a postponed one. Each ground for suspension carries at most 60 days, graded by Art. 45 para. 3 AVIV as 1 to 15 days for slight fault, 16 to 30 for medium fault and 31 to 60 for serious fault. A suspension lapses if it has not been enforced within six months of the suspension period starting.

Illness, accident and pregnancy come second. If you are temporarily unfit for placement, the full allowance continues at most until the 30th day after the incapacity began, and within the qualifying frame this is limited to 44 allowances (Art. 28 para. 1 AVIG). The incapacity must be reported to the RAV within a week; report it late without an excusable reason and there is no entitlement at all for the days before the report (Art. 42 AVIV).

The pleasant item on the list is the control-free days. After every 60 days of controlled unemployment you are entitled to five consecutive days on which you do not have to be available for placement (Art. 27 AVIV). They must be announced at least 14 days in advance, and they count as taken even if you do not take them without an excusable reason.

Three ways the ceiling moves up while you are claiming

The largest extension sits just before retirement. If your qualifying frame opens within the four years before the AHV reference age, you are entitled to 120 additional allowances, and the frame is extended to the end of the month preceding your first AHV pension payment (Art. 41b paras. 1 and 2 AVIV, implementing Art. 27 para. 3 AVIG).

Inside a running frame, the ceiling itself can be revised upwards. arbeit.swiss lists four triggers you have to report to your last unemployment fund: you turn 25 during the frame; you turn 55 and can show 22 contribution months; you are under 25 and become liable for maintenance; or you are over 25, can show 22 contribution months and are granted a disability pension of at least 40 percent. Depending on the case the ceiling rises to 260, 400 or 520 allowances. Nobody files that report for you.

Two more provisions extend the window rather than the counter. If you moved into self-employment without drawing insurance benefits and then gave it up, the qualifying frame is extended by two years (Art. 9a AVIG) — though the allowances drawn may still not exceed the maximum under Art. 27. And if you devoted yourself to raising a child under ten, the qualifying frame is extended by two years and the contribution frame stretches to four (Art. 9b AVIG).

Restarting the counter: twelve contribution months

A new entitlement is earned, not waited out. The contribution condition is met by anyone who has worked in insured employment for at least twelve months inside the two-year contribution frame (Art. 13 para. 1 AVIG). Every full calendar month of insured employment counts as one contribution month, and shorter engagements are added together at 30 calendar days per month (Art. 11 paras. 1 and 2 AVIV).

Part-time work is treated identically. Contribution time for part-timers is established by the same rules as for full-timers, and holding several part-time jobs at once still counts once (Art. 11 para. 4 AVIV). A 50 percent post therefore builds contribution months at full speed while producing lower insured earnings, and so a lower allowance.

One niche rule doubles the pace. In occupations where frequently changing or fixed-term engagements are the norm — the ordinance names musicians, actors, circus artists, artistic staff at radio, television and film, and film technicians among others — contribution time is doubled for the first 60 calendar days of a fixed-term contract (Art. 12a AVIV together with Art. 8 AVIV). Outside that list, no doubling applies.

What a year of searching looks like in our own advert data

260 allowances is about twelve months, and twelve months is not one job market but a dozen of them in sequence. In our own stock of Swiss job adverts, 58.9 percent of all dated adverts were posted in the last 30 days, 13.2 percent in the last seven, and 83.6 percent within 90 days; the median live advert is 20 days old. English-language adverts are the slowest-moving of the four: a median age of 43 days, with only 41.1 percent posted in the last month, against 63.2 percent for German-language adverts.

That difference matters more to an English-speaking jobseeker than any general market commentary. The English-language segment refreshes more slowly, so working through everything visible today buys fewer weeks of fresh openings than it does in German — and 38.7 percent of English-language adverts do not even state an employment type, which makes filtering by workload unreliable in exactly the segment where the stock moves least.

The second figure concerns rebuilding contribution months. Only 1.2 percent of adverts flag a fixed term in the title or summary at all; of those, 22.3 percent name a length in months, and among those 61.7 percent name six to eleven months while 30 percent name twelve or more. A six-month contract delivers six contribution months — half the distance to a new frame, not the whole of it. Part-time postings, at 5.5 percent of the index, deliver contribution months at exactly the same rate as full-time ones.

After the last daily allowance

When the balance is empty your entitlement has expired. According to arbeit.swiss the counselling and placement services of the regional employment centres remain open to you, and labour market measures can, under certain conditions, still be used until the end of the running qualifying frame. Those whose entitlement expires from age 60 may qualify for transition benefits; below that, municipal social assistance is often what remains.

One detail is easy to miss: Suva accident cover for people drawing allowances ends 31 days after the entitlement ends. If no job starts immediately, non-occupational accident cover has to be arranged privately, through Suva's optional insurance by agreement or through your health insurer.

None of these numbers is decided by the RAV. The maximum number of allowances, the start of the qualifying frame and every day charged against the balance appear in the decision issued by your unemployment insurance fund, and the monthly statement it sends you carries the running total. That is the office to ask how many allowances you have left.

The two framework periods, which are not the same thing

There are two, they run at the same time, and they are constantly confused. Under AVIG art. 9. As of 7 September 2026.

One date, two windows

Art. 9 AVIG is four sentences long and carries the whole structure. Paragraph 1 states that two-year frames apply to drawing benefit and to the contribution period unless the act provides otherwise. Paragraph 2 sets the key date. Paragraph 3 hangs the second window on it: the contribution frame begins two years before that day. One date, two spans of time, pointing in opposite directions.

The windows do different jobs. The backward one is a test: within those two years you must have been in contribution-liable employment for at least twelve months (Art. 13 para. 1 AVIG). Anyone who could not meet that because of schooling, retraining, illness, accident or maternity for more than twelve months in total inside the same window may be exempted instead (Art. 14 para. 1 AVIG). The forward window tests nothing — it contains. Inside it lie all the days on which daily allowances can be drawn at all.

This is why two questions that usually arrive as one at the RAV counter need separating. How long does my window run, and how many daily allowances sit inside it? The window measures calendar time; entitlement measures days. A frame with a small entitlement expires with days unused, and a large entitlement can be exhausted long before the calendar catches up.

What else that one date decides

Your money first. Insured earnings are measured from the average wage of the last six contribution months before the benefit frame opens, or the last twelve months if that average is higher (Art. 37 para. 1 and 2 AVIV). Inside the frame they are recalculated only under narrow conditions — for instance after at least six uninterrupted months of contribution-liable work at a wage above the insured earnings, followed by unemployment again (Art. 37 para. 4 AVIV).

Then your fund. You choose it freely, at the latest at the first counselling and control interview, and from then on you are tied to it for the length of the frame (Art. 20 para. 1 AVIG, Art. 28 para. 1 AVIV). A change is permitted only if you move out of the area your fund covers, and outside the end of a frame it has to take effect at the start of a control period (Art. 28 para. 2 AVIV).

Then the smaller deadlines inside. Entitlement for a given control period lapses if it is not claimed within three months of the end of that period (Art. 20 para. 3 AVIG). During temporary incapacity for work the counter runs per frame rather than per illness: at most 44 daily allowances within the frame (Art. 28 para. 1 AVIG). And people exempted from the contribution period serve a special waiting period of up to twelve months before drawing for the first time in the frame — the wording places that wait inside the running window (Art. 18 para. 2 AVIG).

Finally the support measures. Induction allowances are paid within the frame for six months at most, twelve in exceptional cases (Art. 66 para. 2 AVIG). Commuting and weekly-residence contributions are paid within the frame for six months at most (Art. 68 para. 2 AVIG). Insured persons over 50 may attend training and employment measures until the end of their frame irrespective of their entitlement to benefit (Art. 59 para. 3bis AVIG). And with interim earnings, compensation for lost income runs twelve months at most, but until the end of the frame for those with maintenance obligations towards children under 25 or aged 45 and over (Art. 24 para. 4 AVIG).

When the window is extended

Self-employment without support from the insurance: where the move was made while a frame was running, and where at the point of giving the activity up the person cannot show a sufficient contribution period precisely because of it, the benefit frame is extended by two years, and the contribution frame by the duration of the self-employment, capped at two years (Art. 9a AVIG). The ordinance draws two lines: no extension where the activity was contribution-liable under Art. 13 AVIG, and none for anyone who drew benefits while self-employed (Art. 3a para. 1 and 2 AVIV). Where self-employment is taken up with the insurance supporting it, the running frame is likewise extended by two years (Art. 71d para. 2 AVIG).

Child-raising periods: the benefit frame is extended by two years where a frame was already running when the person began caring for a child under ten, and where the contribution period is not met at the point of re-registration (Art. 9b para. 1 AVIG). Where no frame was running then, the contribution frame is four years instead of two (para. 2), and every further birth extends it by up to two more years (para. 3). For the same child-raising period the rule applies to one parent only and for one child only (para. 4); the ordinance adds that the child must not yet have reached the age of ten at registration, and that contribution months already used to open a frame cannot count a second time (Art. 3b para. 1 and 3 AVIV).

Shortly before reference age: where a frame opens within the last four years before it, 120 additional daily allowances are granted and the frame is extended to the end of the month preceding the first AHV pension payment (Art. 27 para. 3 AVIG, Art. 41b para. 1 and 2 AVIV). Training allowances extend the frame to the end of the approved training (Art. 66c para. 4 AVIG). One caveat covers all of these: more time is not more money. The daily allowances may not exceed the maximum under Art. 27 AVIG in total (Art. 9a para. 3, Art. 9b para. 5 AVIG).

When a new frame opens — and when it does not

The trigger is in Art. 9 para. 4 AVIG: once the benefit frame has expired and the insured person claims unemployment benefit again, fresh two-year frames apply to both the benefit and the contribution period. Two conditions, not one — expiry and a new claim. A job you start and lose in the middle of a running frame satisfies neither.

For that second frame Art. 13 AVIG applies again, measured in the new backward window: twelve months of contribution-liable employment within the two years before the new key date. For extended frames the ordinance is explicit — the extended frame is replaced by a new one once the maximum number of daily allowances has been exhausted and the conditions for opening a new frame are met (Art. 3a para. 3, Art. 3b para. 5, Art. 41b para. 3 and Art. 95e para. 3 AVIV).

Not every Rahmenfrist in the act is even yours. Short-time work has its own two-year period which belongs to the business and starts on the first day of the first accounting period for which short-time work compensation is paid; after 24 uninterrupted months a new one can be opened only after a six-month waiting period (Art. 35 para. 1 and 4 AVIG). Anyone who becomes unemployed after a spell of short-time work meets two frames with the same name and different owners.

After the window closes

When the frame ends, drawing ends with it, even where allowances are arithmetically left over. A rule that is easy to miss then applies: after the benefit frame has expired, training and employment measures under Art. 59d para. 1 AVIG cannot be attended for two years (Art. 82 AVIV). The window keeps working past its own end.

Two dates are worth a calendar entry as soon as your fund sends its decision: the first day of your frame, which is printed there and which also fixes the backward window behind it, and the last. The end of a frame is also the one moment at which a change of fund does not have to fall on the start of a control period (Art. 28 para. 2 AVIV).

Two years, a market that is not on your doorstep

The frame is tied to where you live; the job market is not. In our own stock of Swiss job adverts, 19.8 per cent are written in English, against 41.8 per cent in German, 9.9 per cent in French and 1.6 per cent in Italian. In the named French-speaking cities, which together carry 13.2 per cent of the adverts, 43.5 per cent are in French and 24.3 per cent in English — the English-language market is not concentrated in one region, and a two-year search rarely stays inside one language area.

That is the practical reading of two provisions that otherwise look like footnotes. Commuting and weekly-residence contributions exist because no suitable work could be placed in your region of residence, and they run for six months at most inside the frame (Art. 68 AVIG). Moving out of your fund area is the only reason the ordinance allows a change of fund mid-frame (Art. 28 para. 2 AVIV). Both are answers to the same fact: over two years, a search moves.

Contribution period: how many months are enough

The months must fall inside the two-year contribution framework period. Contribution time means insured work, not employment as such — unpaid leave does not count. As of 7 September 2026.

Months that count without a franc of contributions

Art. 13 para. 2 UIA credits four categories in which nothing was paid in. The first is time worked as an employee before reaching the age from which old-age contributions become due. Under Art. 3 para. 2 let. a of the old-age insurance act, working children are free of contributions until 31 December of the year in which they turn 17 — and those months still count towards unemployment insurance.

The second is Swiss military, civil and civil-protection service, together with compulsory home-economics courses run full-day and without interruption for at least two weeks. The third is time inside a running employment relationship where you receive no salary because of illness or accident and therefore pay nothing. The fourth is work interrupted by maternity, to the extent the absence is prescribed by employee-protection rules or agreed in a collective labour agreement.

For the second to fourth categories the ordinance also fixes which salary applies: the one you would normally have earned (Art. 39 UIO). These months are therefore not a formality that quietly depresses your insured earnings — they are valued as if you had been at work.

Work done abroad

If you moved to Switzerland from the EU or EFTA, the insurance months behind you are not automatically written off. The arbeit.swiss FAQ on unemployment benefit lists three things that count as contribution period: contribution-liable employment as an employee in Switzerland; contribution periods completed in an EU state as an EU national or in an EFTA state as an EFTA national, provided your last contribution-liable job was in Switzerland; and contribution-liable employment abroad for a Swiss company, that is, a posting.

The “last job in Switzerland” condition is where many international CVs run aground, and it has one documented exception. For cross-border commuters living in Switzerland, the same source says the periods are counted even where the last contribution-liable job was not Swiss.

Time spent outside the EU and EFTA follows a different rule. There the question is not aggregation but exemption: someone returning after more than a year in a third country may, under Art. 14 para. 3 UIA, be exempted from meeting the contribution period for one year, provided they can show corresponding employment abroad and at least six contribution months in Switzerland. Art. 13 para. 2 UIO adds that those six months must fall inside the frame period for the contribution period.

What builds nothing

Drawing benefit does not rebuild the counter. Art. 2 para. 2 let. e UIA expressly exempts unemployed people from contribution liability on the compensation under Art. 22a para. 1, so months on daily allowances are not contribution months. The English version of the arbeit.swiss FAQ makes a second point in the same direction: you do not normally earn contribution periods from participation in a labour market measure funded by the insurance.

Interim earnings depend entirely on status. arbeit.swiss lists the acquisition of new contribution periods among the advantages of taking interim work, and then excludes self-employed interim earnings from exactly that advantage. Employed interim work rebuilds the counter; freelancing alongside your benefit does not.

There is also the case where contributions are paid and no claim arises at all. arbeit.swiss counts among those without entitlement any employee who, as a board member of a public limited company, as a partner in a limited liability company, as a person with a financial stake, or as a member of a top decision-making body, can determine or significantly influence the employer's decisions — their working spouses and registered partners included. The contribution record can be spotless and still lead nowhere.

How the months are proved

Nothing here is estimated. After you register, arbeit.swiss says the fund needs the application for unemployment benefit, the employer certificate forms covering the last two years, whatever further information the fund asks for, and — if you are coming from an EU or EFTA member state — form PD U1.

The two-year span of those certificates is not arbitrary. It is exactly the window in which the contribution months are looked for, which is why every engagement inside it belongs in the file: the short one, the small one, the one that ended badly. A certificate that never arrives is the most common reason a contribution count comes out lower than expected.

The twelve months then do a second job. The reference period for calculating insured earnings starts, regardless of when you registered, on the day before a creditable loss of earnings occurs — on condition that at least twelve contribution months lie before that day inside the frame period for the contribution period (Art. 37 para. 3 UIO). The threshold is not only a door; it also fixes where the salary calculation begins.

When twelve months cannot be reached

Art. 14 UIA provides an exemption for people who could not build the period at all. It applies where, inside the frame period, you were out of any employment relationship for more than twelve months in total because of schooling, retraining, education or further training with at least ten years of residence in Switzerland; because of illness, accident or maternity while resident in Switzerland; or because of a stay in a Swiss detention or work-education institution.

A second ground attaches to an upheaval in life: separation or divorce, invalidity or death of a spouse, the loss of a disability pension, or a similar reason that forces you to take up or extend employment. The event must be no more than a year old and you must have been resident in Switzerland when it happened (Art. 14 para. 2 UIA). The ordinance treats the end of caring for a dependent person the same way, where that person permanently needed help, the two shared a household, and the care lasted more than a year (Art. 13 para. 1bis UIO).

Exemption is not the same as a completed contribution period. The fund then calculates on flat rates rather than on your former salary, and the maximum number of daily allowances is set differently. The two neighbouring questions on this page cover what that does to the amount and to the duration.

Which jobs on the market actually build months

Because the count is in months rather than in percentages of a full-time load, the practical question is not what a job pays but how many months it lasts. In our own index of Swiss job adverts, 3.7 per cent of all adverts are apprenticeships or trainee positions, 2.9 per cent are internships, and 1.8 per cent state an explicitly temporary or fixed-term contract. All three are employment relationships that attract unemployment insurance contributions, so all three build contribution months like any other job.

The apprenticeship adverts have an unusual time horizon: 46.1 per cent of them already name the year 2027 in the title. Applicants for basic vocational training are therefore competing for a start more than a year away — and the earliest months of that training are precisely the ones Art. 13 para. 2 let. a UIA credits even though the trainee is still too young for old-age contributions.

The biggest blind spot is elsewhere. In 9.1 per cent of adverts the employment format is not stated at all, so the text gives no clue whether the role is open-ended, a few months of cover, or a mandate. If reaching twelve contribution months is the point, that question belongs in the first conversation rather than in the contract.

Speed is similar across the three formats: the median apprenticeship advert is 22 days old, the median internship advert 24 days, and the median temporary or fixed-term advert 20 days — the same age as the index as a whole.

One thing about the sources, and it is the reason this page exists

Four federal texts decide this question: the Unemployment Insurance Act and its ordinance, and the Loss of Earnings Compensation Act and its ordinance. Checked on Fedlex on 31 August 2026, none of the four has an English consolidation at all. The Code of Obligations and the Employment Act do — you can read Art. 329f and Art. 35a in English, with the standard notice that English is not an official language and the text has no legal force. But for the articles that actually settle whether you are paid, the English reader is working from summaries.

The summaries are not always reliable. The English arbeit.swiss FAQ still carries the waiting-period table in German, headed «Einkommen CHF pro Jahr (gilt auch für Pauschalansätze) Bedingungen Wartezeit», in the middle of an otherwise English answer. And it renders the third ground for exemption from the contribution period as «a stay in a Swiss psychiatric hospital», where Art. 14 para. 1 letter c AVIG says a stay in a Swiss detention or work-education institution, or a similar Swiss establishment. Those are not the same thing.

None of this is a reason to distrust arbeit.swiss, which is the correct starting point and says the substantive things clearly. It is a reason to read the German, French or Italian article before you rely on a number.

The 98 days

Entitlement to the maternity allowance arises on the day of the birth and is paid for 98 consecutive days (Art. 16c paras. 1 and 2 EOG). The daily rate is 80 per cent of the average income earned before entitlement began (Art. 16e para. 2 EOG), capped at 220 francs a day (Art. 16f para. 1 EOG, the amount in force since 1 January 2025). Employment law supplies the frame around it: at least 14 weeks of maternity leave after the birth (Art. 329f para. 1 CO).

For the unemployment insurance, the article that decides everything is Art. 16g para. 1 letter a EOG. The maternity allowance excludes the payment of unemployment-insurance daily allowances. Not reduces — excludes. There is no partial benefit during those days.

The other half of that rule is the part people miss. The arbeit.swiss FAQ states it plainly: «You are not entitled to unemployment benefit during maternity, paternity or care leave. You do not have to fulfil any obligations with regard to the unemployment insurance during this period either.» No job-search efforts, no monitoring, no counselling interviews. One duty survives: the leave must be reported to your RAV in good time.

How you end up unemployed after maternity leave at all

The question is not rhetorical, because the answer decides the rest of the calculation. After the probation period, an employer may not give notice during pregnancy or in the 16 weeks following the birth (Art. 336c para. 1 CO). The protected period therefore runs two weeks longer than the 14 weeks of leave.

That leaves three routes, and the insurance treats them differently. Notice given before the pregnancy, or after the protected period ends. A fixed-term contract simply expiring — the protected period does not extend a fixed term. Or you resign, because the workload, the hours or the commute no longer fit. Only the third lands in Art. 30 para. 1 letter a AVIG, suspension of entitlement for unemployment through one’s own fault, at most 60 days per ground. Suspension days are not a loss of entitlement: they are days without a daily allowance, counted against the maximum (Art. 30 para. 3 AVIG).

If you are reading this from abroad, note what has no equivalent in most systems: the protection is against the employer terminating, not against the contract ending, and it does not help the person who resigns.

Does maternity leave count as a contribution period?

Partly, and the qualification is the sharpest sentence in the whole chapter. Art. 13 para. 2 letter d AVIG counts «interruptions of work due to maternity» toward the contribution period — but only «in so far as they are prescribed by employee-protection provisions or agreed in a collective employment agreement».

What is prescribed sits in the Employment Act. Art. 35a para. 3 ArG: women who have given birth may not be employed during the eight weeks after the birth, and thereafter until the 16th week only with their consent. So the first eight weeks are an outright ban on employment. Weeks nine to sixteen are not a ban but a consent requirement. Anything a collective agreement adds as maternity leave falls under the same counting rule on the wording of the article — which is a reason to read your own GAV before you do the sums.

In practice: maternity leave does not tear a hole in your contribution record, but it does not automatically fill it for its full length either. If you are close to the twelve months, that distinction is the one that decides the case. Otherwise the ordinary rule applies — twelve months of contributory employment inside the framework period (Art. 13 para. 1 AVIG), which the neighbouring answer on this page sets out in full.

If the contribution period is short: exemption, and what it costs

Art. 14 para. 1 letter b AVIG exempts people who, within the framework period and for more than twelve months in total, were not in an employment relationship and could not meet the contribution period because of illness, accident or maternity, provided they were resident in Switzerland during that time. The route exists — for a longer family break, not for the 14 weeks.

It is expensive in three separate ways. First, a person exempt from the contribution period is entitled to a maximum of 90 daily allowances (Art. 27 para. 4 AVIG), against 260 for twelve months of contributions and 400 for eighteen (Art. 27 para. 2 AVIG). Second, the insured earning is not your former salary but a flat rate under Art. 41 para. 1 AVIV: 153 francs a day for a tertiary qualification, 127 francs for an upper-secondary vocational qualification, 102 francs for everyone else aged 20 and over. Third, the special waiting period — and here the widely feared 120 days sit in the wrong place. Art. 6 para. 1 AVIV imposes the 120 days only for the education ground in Art. 14 para. 1 letter a. Paragraph 2 of the same article says that all other exempt insured persons serve a waiting period of five days. The arbeit.swiss FAQ lists maternity in the five-day group, in every language version.

For a foreign national there is a further condition worth reading twice: letter b requires residence in Switzerland during the period in question, and Art. 8 para. 1 letter c AVIG requires residence in Switzerland for entitlement generally. A family break spent at the grandparents’ in another country is not the same case.

The framework period keeps running

The framework period for benefit begins on the first day on which all the eligibility conditions are met and lasts two years (Art. 9 paras. 1 and 2 AVIG). The Act contains no suspension of that window for maternity leave. The ordinance assumes it keeps running: Art. 29 para. 1bis letter a EOV makes an extension of the maternity allowance conditional on the framework period for benefit still being open on the day after the maternity leave ends.

The only extension the law gives parents is Art. 9b AVIG, and its conditions are narrow. Under paragraph 1 the benefit framework period is extended by two years provided a framework period was running when the care of a child under ten began, and the contribution-period condition is not met at the time of re-registration. Under paragraph 2 the contribution framework period is four years instead of two, provided no benefit framework period was running when that care began — the case of a mother who worked before the birth and then took a longer break.

Two limits are rarely quoted alongside it. Paragraph 4 applies the extension, for the same period of care, to one parent only and for one child only. Paragraph 5 confirms that the daily allowances may not in total exceed the maximum under Art. 27. The extension buys time, not more allowances.

Fitness for placement, childcare, and the 70 per cent trap

A person is fit for placement if they are «prepared, able and permitted» to accept suitable work and take part in integration measures (Art. 15 para. 1 AVIG). The Act does not say you must produce proof of a childcare place. It says you must be able to start a job — and your RAV adviser derives the childcare question from that. How strictly it is handled differs from canton to canton, which is one of the points where a direct conversation with your own RAV is worth more than any general answer.

The duty of care toward relatives appears in the Act only once, and there as a protection. Under Art. 16 para. 2 letter f AVIG, work is not suitable if it requires a journey of more than two hours each way and no appropriate accommodation is available at the place of work, or where, with such accommodation, the insured person could not meet their duty of care toward relatives without considerable difficulty. Letter g excludes work requiring constant on-call availability beyond the guaranteed occupation.

The uncomfortable one is letter i: work is not suitable if it pays less than 70 per cent of the insured earning. If you are insured on a full-time salary and can now only take a 60 per cent post, that post falls below the threshold — legally unsuitable, even though it is the only shape that fits. The Act allows a way round: the cantonal authority may, with the approval of the tripartite commission, exceptionally declare such work suitable, and Art. 24 AVIG provides compensation payments for interim earnings. Both are procedures rather than automatic outcomes, and both belong in the first counselling interview rather than in the final statement.

One piece of good news in the same neighbourhood: the reduced daily allowance of 70 per cent under Art. 22 para. 2 AVIG only applies to insured persons with no maintenance obligation toward children under 25. With a child it stays at 80 per cent of the insured earning.

If you were already unemployed when the child was born

Then the order reverses, and the result surprises people. Art. 29 para. 1 EOV gives a mother who is unemployed at the time of the birth a right to the maternity allowance if she either drew an unemployment daily allowance up to the birth, or, on the day of the birth, meets the contribution period required for such an allowance. The second limb is the striking one: meeting the contribution period is enough, without ever having drawn anything.

The amount is protected by Art. 16g para. 2 letter e EOG. If a daily allowance under the AVIG was payable up to the start of the maternity allowance, the maternity allowance is at least equal to the allowance drawn until then. Moving from one insurance to the other costs you nothing in rate.

And a detail from leaflet 6.02 of the OASI/DI information centre that appears almost nowhere else: if you are unemployed, you remain covered by accident insurance during maternity leave, so you do not need to lift the suspension of accident cover in your health insurance — on condition that there is no gap between the unemployment daily allowance and the maternity allowance. A few days’ gap is not only a question of money.

Where the cantons have their own rules

Art. 16h EOG expressly allows cantons to provide a higher or longer maternity allowance in addition to the federal one, and to levy special contributions to finance it. There is therefore no single Swiss answer to how long the 98 days really last.

Geneva has used the power. Its cantonal maternity and adoption insurance act provides an allowance for 112 days — 16 weeks rather than 14 — and caps it not at 220 francs but at the maximum insured earning that applies in compulsory accident insurance. Anything received under federal law is deducted. For the stretch between the end of the federal entitlement and the end of the cantonal one, the Geneva act names federal unemployment daily allowances explicitly among the benefits its allowance is coordinated with.

For every other canton the rule is that federal law is the floor and not the ceiling. Whether your canton tops up is a question of cantonal law, and the office that answers it is your AHV compensation office, not the RAV.

What the market says about coming back at a reduced workload

The hard part of the return is usually not the legal question but the practical one: does the reduced-workload job that makes the arithmetic work actually exist? Our own index gives a blunter answer than the advice columns do.

Explicitly advertised job sharing appears in 0.05 per cent of the open adverts — roughly one in two thousand. Half of those come from an employer whose name identifies a hospital, a canton, a commune or a school; outside healthcare they are isolated cases such as Allianz Suisse and Hilti Schweiz. Adverts that themselves raise a return to work after a family break account for 0.06 per cent, and every one of them is German-language: among French, Italian and English adverts there is not one. Any wording at all about childcare, family-friendliness or work-life balance appears in 2.3 per cent.

Where reduced workloads genuinely are advertised, the pattern is consistent: schools and universities flag part-time in 19.5 per cent of their adverts, cantons and communes in 18.3, hospitals and care providers in 12.8, against 5.5 per cent for every other employer. Those three groups together are only about seven per cent of the index.

And that is where the English-language reader has a specific problem, shown in the figure. Only 0.5 per cent of English-language adverts come from that group, against 8.6 per cent of German ones. The corner of the Swiss market that most often advertises a reduced workload is also the corner that almost never advertises in English — cantonal administrations, communal schools and public hospitals recruit in the local language. English-language adverts overall carry a part-time flag in 2.8 per cent of cases. If you are searching in English only, you are not seeing the part of the market that would fit.

The order to do it in

Report first: the maternity leave goes to your RAV in good time, even though no obligations run during it. The maternity allowance itself is not claimed there but with your AHV compensation office — directly if you are unemployed, otherwise through your employer. Leaflet 6.02 adds that your current or last employer certifies the length of the employment and the relevant salary.

Then the arithmetic: how many months of contributory employment sit in your contribution framework period, and how much of the maternity leave counts under Art. 13 para. 2 letter d AVIG? If the twelve months are there, the rest is form-filling. If they are not, the case turns on Art. 14 and on whether Art. 9b saves the window — and it is the unemployment fund that makes that assessment, not the RAV.

Then the date: at the latest on the first day you claim benefit for (Art. 17 para. 2 AVIG). That is the day after the 98th — not the day the search starts to stall.