What happens when unemployment benefit runs out in Switzerland?

The word is not in the unemployment insurance act at all

It is worth knowing where the rule actually lives, because the German word you will hear from your adviser does not appear in the law that governs your benefit. We searched the full consolidated texts of the AVIG (the Unemployment Insurance Act) and the AVIV (its ordinance) as published on Fedlex on 31 August 2026: "Aussteuerung" and "ausgesteuert" appear zero times in either. The French versions contain no "fin de droit" either.

The only federal definition sits in a much younger statute that most people have never heard of, the Bridging Benefits Act of 2020. Article 3 paragraph 2 defines the state: you are ausgesteuert when you have used up your entitlement to daily allowances, or when the entitlement lapsed at the end of the qualifying period and no new one can be opened. Paragraph 3 fixes the date: it happens in the month in which the last daily allowance is drawn or in which the qualifying period expires.

That date matters more than the word. Almost every deadline described below counts from it.

Four things the insurance was paying for you, and when each stops

While the daily allowance runs, your unemployment fund quietly settles four contributions that never appear as a line you notice. Article 22a AVIG lists them: the allowance counts as relevant salary for OASI purposes and the fund pays both your share and the employer share of OASI, disability insurance and loss-of-earnings compensation; it deducts and forwards the occupational-pension contribution to the Substitute Occupational Benefit Institution so that death and disability cover continues; and it deducts up to two thirds of the premium for compulsory non-occupational accident insurance and pays it to Suva together with the third it carries itself.

Each of those unwinds on a different clock. Accident cover ends on the 31st day after the day on which the conditions were last met — Article 3 paragraph 2 UVG. Paragraph 3 of the same article obliges the insurer to offer you the option of extending cover "by special agreement for up to six months": the Abredeversicherung, which arbeit.swiss translates as interim accident insurance and which must be taken out before those 31 days run out. Cover with the Substitute Occupational Benefit Institution continues for one further month. The family-allowance supplement stops immediately.

The accident gap is the one that hurts, because it is invisible until something happens. Suva pays treatment costs, daily allowances and pensions after an accident, with no deductible and no co-payment. Your health insurer covers treatment costs and stops there. If you let the 31 days pass without either taking the interim cover or notifying your health insurer, nothing can be repaired retroactively.

The pension gap you will not see for thirty years

After the entitlement expires you count as non-gainfully employed for OASI purposes. arbeit.swiss puts the consequence plainly: missing contribution years can reduce your later OASI pension, and you must notify the OASI compensation office of the canton where you live, or its communal branch. Nobody does this for you, and nobody chases you.

Article 10 AHVG sets what falls due: non-employed persons pay a contribution according to their social circumstances, with a minimum of CHF 435 a year and a maximum of fifty times that. The minimum applies expressly to non-employed persons receiving a minimum income or other public social assistance, and to those supported financially by third parties. Skipping it causes no problem this year. It causes a hole in your contribution record, and the pension formula reads that record decades later.

This matters disproportionately to people who moved to Switzerland mid-career, because a Swiss pension is already being built on fewer contribution years than a lifelong resident has. A gap of one or two years is a larger proportional loss for you than for your Swiss colleague.

The age threshold that decides whether courses continue: 50

arbeit.swiss says labour market measures remain available "under certain conditions" until the end of the current qualifying period, and does not say what those conditions are. The statute does, and the decisive one is a number.

Article 59 paragraph 3bis AVIG: insured persons who are older than 50 and who meet the conditions of paragraph 3 may take part in training and employment measures until the end of their qualifying period for benefit, irrespective of their entitlement to unemployment compensation. That last clause is the whole mechanism — it is what detaches participation from the daily allowance. The AVIG contains no equivalent provision for anyone younger.

The second half is read less often and cuts the other way: until the end of the qualifying period, which runs two years. If you exhausted your allowance early, a window remains. If you drew it to the last day of the two years, there is nothing left to attach to. Two people of the same age in the same trade can be in completely different positions depending on which of the two clocks ran out first.

Four cases in which the entitlement revives

Being cut off is not always final. While the two-year qualifying period is still running, the maximum number of daily allowances can increase retroactively, and arbeit.swiss asks you to report the circumstances to your last unemployment insurance fund yourself.

You turn 25 during the qualifying period: the maximum rises to 260 or 400 daily allowances depending on your contribution period. You turn 55 with a contribution period of 22 months: it rises to 520. You are under 25 and become liable for maintenance: 260 or 400. You are over 25, have 22 months of contributions and are awarded a disability pension corresponding to a degree of at least 40 per cent: 520. The underlying ladder is Article 27 AVIG, which grades the maximum by age and contribution period.

Read those figures carefully, because the official English page misstates them. It writes "the maximum daily allowance entitlement increases to CHF 260 or CHF 400" and "increases to CHF 520" — as amounts in francs. The German page says 260 or 400 Taggelder and 520 Taggelder: numbers of daily allowances, not francs. The Italian version says numero massimo di indennità giornaliere, which is correct. If you read only the English, you will misunderstand what a birthday is worth here, and by a wide margin.

From 60: transition benefits, and what they actually require

Transition benefits — Überbrückungsleistungen, prestations transitoires — are the only federal cash benefit that follows the daily allowance, and they are tightly bounded. Article 5 paragraph 1 of the Bridging Benefits Act requires all of the following at once: that your entitlement expired in the month you turn 60 or later; that you were insured with OASI for at least 20 years, at least five of them after your 50th birthday, earning in each of those years at least 75 per cent of the maximum old-age pension; and that your net assets are below half the asset threshold of the supplementary-benefits act. Leaflet 5.03 published by the AHV/IV information service puts the income figure at CHF 22,680 a year (75 per cent of CHF 30,240, 2025 values) and the asset ceiling at CHF 50,000 for single people and CHF 100,000 for married couples, with owner-occupied property left out.

Paragraph 3 excludes anyone entitled to a disability pension and anyone drawing an early old-age pension. The leaflet adds two exclusions worth knowing: people whose entitlement expired before their 60th birthday, and people whose entitlement expired before 1 July 2021, when the act came into force.

For anyone who has lived in Switzerland only part of their working life, condition two is usually the one that decides it. Twenty years of OASI insurance with a qualifying income in each of them is a long Swiss working life. There is one point in the other direction: the leaflet states that transition benefits can also be paid to people resident in an EU or EFTA state, with the implementing body of the last Swiss place of residence competent — or, for someone who never lived in Switzerland, the body at the registered office of the last employer.

And one sentence that costs money if you skim it. Article 14 paragraph 1: the entitlement exists from the beginning of the month in which the application was filed. Not from the month you were cut off. Meet the conditions in February, apply in June, and February to May are simply gone.

Two federal sources, two different ceilings

This one is worth doing the arithmetic on yourself. The arbeit.swiss overview page, in all four of its language versions, gives the annual maximum for transition benefits as CHF 44,123 for a single person and CHF 66,184 for a couple, with an income threshold of CHF 21,510. Leaflet 5.03 gives CHF 46,508, CHF 69,761 and CHF 22,680. Both are federal, both were online on 31 August 2026.

The statute settles it. Article 7 paragraph 2 caps the benefits at 2.25 times the general living-needs amount of Article 9 paragraph 1 letter a. That amount currently stands at CHF 20,670 for a single person and CHF 31,005 for a couple, adjusted with effect from 1 January 2025. Multiply: 2.25 times CHF 20,670 gives CHF 46,508, and 2.25 times CHF 31,005 gives CHF 69,761. Those are the leaflet figures. The overview page corresponds to a lower living-needs amount than the one the act carries today.

The general lesson is more useful than the specific number. Where an amount decides something, take it from the statute or from the current leaflet of the body that pays, not from the overview page you find first — and treat any Swiss social-insurance figure published without a valid-from date as unusable, because these are re-set every two years.

Where the English version stops

Switzerland runs its social insurance in three official languages, and English is a courtesy. On this topic the courtesy is thin, and it is worth knowing exactly where it ends before you rely on it.

Leaflet 5.03, the document that carries every amount and the list of offices, exists as 5.03.d, 5.03.f and 5.03.i. There is no 5.03.e: the English leaflet index on ahv-iv.ch has categories for general information, contributions, OASI benefits, loss-of-earnings compensation and international matters, and none at all for supplementary or transition benefits. The English page of the Federal Social Insurance Office on transition benefits is a single paragraph that ends by telling you the further information is available "in German, French and Italian".

On the arbeit.swiss page itself, the English text is a full translation, but the links leave the language: the swissstaffing directory and both Suva pages it points at open in German. Combined with the CHF error described above, the practical rule for an English-speaking reader in Switzerland is to use the English page for orientation and the German, French or Italian page for anything you intend to act on — and to take amounts from the leaflet rather than from any overview page.

Below 60 the answer is communal, not federal

If you are under 60, there is no federal successor benefit. What remains is social assistance from the commune where you live, organised cantonally and communally, with real differences in rates, procedure and repayment obligations. The common floor is constitutional: Article 12 of the Federal Constitution gives anyone in distress and unable to look after themselves the right to assistance, care and the means indispensable for a life led in human dignity. The SKOS guidelines that shape the amounts are professional recommendations, not federal law, and their own website is published in German, French and Italian only.

For non-Swiss residents there is a further consideration this page will not pretend to resolve. Drawing social assistance can have consequences under residence law depending on your permit and your nationality, and the rules differ between agreement and non-agreement states. That is a question for the cantonal migration office of your canton, before you apply rather than after — and it is precisely the kind of question where a general answer is worse than none.

A useful detail on sequencing: the Bridging Benefits Act expressly does not count public social assistance as income when the transition benefit is calculated. Being on social assistance at 59 therefore does not reduce a transition benefit at 60.

The route SECO points at, measured

The first concrete suggestion on the official page is to contact private employment agencies directly, with a link to the swissstaffing member directory. It is sound advice, and it can be measured. We read that directory on 31 August 2026 — just under a thousand entries including branch offices — and matched the names against the advertisers in our own index of open Swiss job adverts as of 30 August 2026, checking every match by hand.

Confirmed members account for 1.75 per cent of open adverts, spread across 25 advertisers. That is a lower bound, since a member advertising under a brand name we could not match does not count. But the order of magnitude is the point: agencies are a small part of the public advert market precisely because most of what they do never becomes an advert. That is the argument for phoning them rather than waiting to see their postings.

One number is specific to you. Among adverts written in English, the confirmed-agency share is 0.35 per cent — the lowest of the four languages, and roughly a third of the German-language share. If you search Switzerland mainly in English, this whole channel is close to invisible from where you are standing, which is a reason to approach it directly rather than a reason to conclude it is small.

What to keep running

The dated items first, because they are deadlines and not suggestions: interim accident cover with Suva within 31 days; registration with the OASI compensation office of your canton; a message to your last unemployment fund if a birthday puts you into one of the four revival cases; and, from 60, the transition-benefit application in the month you need it, filed with the right office — usually the cantonal compensation office, but the office differs in Basel-Stadt, Geneva, Vaud and Zurich, where in Zurich it is the supplementary-benefits office of your own municipality.

Then the thing that quietly falls apart. While you are on benefit, the RAV form due by the fifth of the following month forces a record of your applications into existence. Afterwards nothing forces it, and you still need it — for a transition-benefit file, for a cantonal measure, for a voluntary RAV meeting, and simply to see your own search clearly. That is what our application tracker is for: date, employer, role, channel, reply, in one place and exportable.