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Working in Switzerland from Spain or Italy: permits and pay

Country guides8 min · 2026-09-27

If you hold a Spanish or Italian passport, working in Switzerland is a right, not a visa application. The free movement agreement gives you the same access to the Swiss job market as a Swiss citizen. There is a registration step, but no sponsor, no quota and no labour market test. This guide walks through the three permits, the handful of cantons that have a minimum wage, what people actually earn and where, and the parts of Swiss working life that catch newcomers out. It ends with where the jobs really are, because that is the bit most guides get wrong.

Can you work in Switzerland as an EU citizen?

Yes, and it is simpler than most people expect. For a job of up to three months in a calendar year you need no permit at all; your employer reports the job online. For anything longer you register with the commune where you live within two weeks of arriving and apply for a permit before you start. The permit is issued on the strength of your work contract. You may also come to look for work first: SEM issues a job seeker's permit, and if you lose a job later you can stay for at least six months to find another. The rules are on the SEM free movement FAQ; read it once before you travel.

Permit L, B or G: which one you get

The permit follows the contract, not your profession. A contract of between three and twelve months gives you a permit L, valid for as long as the contract runs. A contract of a year or more, or an open-ended one, gives you a permit B, valid for five years and renewable. If you keep your home in Italy, France, Germany or Austria and commute, you get a permit G as a cross-border commuter. The condition is that you go home at least once a week; the old border zones no longer apply, so you can live anywhere in the EU and work anywhere in Switzerland. Around 413,000 people work on a G permit today, and roughly one in five of them lives in Italy. That is the Ticino pattern: a job on the Swiss side, a home in Lombardy.

There is no Swiss minimum wage, except in five cantons

Switzerland has no federal minimum wage. Pay is set by your contract and, in many sectors, by a collective labour agreement. Five cantons have voted in their own floor: Geneva, Neuchâtel, Jura, Ticino and Basel-Stadt. Geneva's is the highest, a little under CHF 25 an hour in 2026, and it rises with inflation every January. In every other canton, Zurich, Bern and Vaud included, there is no legal minimum. That matters most in restaurants and hotels, where roughly half of all jobs pay below the national low-wage line. If you are looking at a first job in hospitality or retail, the cantonal minimum is the number to compare your offer against.

What people actually earn

The Federal Statistical Office surveys wages every two years. The latest round, for 2024, puts the median gross wage for a full-time job at just over CHF 7,000 a month. Sector matters more than anything else. Banks and pharmaceutical companies pay well above the median, machinery and construction sit close to it, and retail, restaurants and hotels sit well below. The chart shows the spread.

Region moves the number too. Zurich pays the most and Ticino the least of the large regions, with a gap of close to CHF 1,800 a month at the median. The survey also shows something worth knowing before you negotiate: in senior roles, foreigners on B and G permits out-earn Swiss colleagues, while in roles without management responsibility they earn less. Read it this way. A Spanish engineer hired into a Basel pharma team gets Swiss pay or better. A Spanish waiter in Geneva gets the minimum wage or close to it.

Where Italians and Spaniards actually work

Italians are the largest foreign community in Switzerland, ahead of Germans and Portuguese, and the Spanish community, while much smaller, has grown every year since 2023. Add the commuters and the map becomes clear. Italian speakers commute into Ticino from Lombardy or settle in the German-speaking industrial cantons around Zurich and Basel. Spaniards have no Spanish-speaking canton to fall back on, so they go where the jobs are, mostly the Geneva to Lausanne corridor in the French-speaking west and the Zurich to Basel corridor in the north.

Cost of living: health insurance is the number to know

Swiss salaries look high until you subtract the things that are private in Switzerland and public in Spain or Italy. Health insurance is compulsory, individual and not paid by your employer. For an adult it costs around CHF 465 a month in 2026, straight out of net pay, plus a deductible when you actually see a doctor. Rent in Zurich and Geneva is the other line that eats a Swiss salary. This is why a Ticino job at a lower wage can leave you with more at the end of the month than a Zurich job at a higher one, if you live on the Italian side of the border. That arrangement has a cost of its own, though, and it is the one nobody budgets for: a G permit pays you in francs while your rent, your shopping and your car fall due in euros, so part of every salary gets converted, twelve times a year. A bank usually takes its cut inside the exchange rate rather than in the fee it shows you, which is why the amount that lands is less than the arithmetic said. Wise converts at the mid-market rate and states the fee separately, so the two are at least comparable; it is a paid link we earn a commission from, and the advice holds either way.

German, French or Italian: the language decides the canton

Switzerland has four national languages, and the canton you pick decides which one you need. About two thirds of residents speak German or Swiss German, just under a quarter French, and under a tenth Italian. For a Spaniard the French-speaking cantons are the short route: Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel and Jura, where the grammar is close to home and three of the four have a minimum wage. For an Italian, Ticino needs no new language at all, which is exactly why its wages are the lowest in the country. The German-speaking cantons pay more and expect German, and in daily life Swiss German. English on its own works in some engineering, pharma and finance teams in Zurich, Basel and Geneva, and in very little else. Roughly half of the Swiss listings we track are written in English, which tells you how international those teams are and how little that says about the rest of the country. Our comparison of English-speaking countries in Europe shows where English goes further.

Where the jobs really are

Swiss jobs are not on job boards. Most hiring runs through company career pages and through the cantonal RAV offices, whose free public portal is job-room.ch. We pull our Swiss listings from the employers' own career sites, and as of late September 2026 that means around 440 open positions, with Roche, Novartis, CERN, Avolta and Swissquote the biggest names on the list and Geneva, Zurich and Basel the biggest cities. Around 30 of those ads mention relocation or visa support, and around 70 are open to people at the start of their career. It is a real sample of the Swiss market, but a sample; keep job-room.ch open in the second tab.

What nobody mentions

First, the market is cooling. Unemployment is still low by Spanish or Italian standards, but it has risen for over a year by Swiss ones, and employers have become choosier. Second, the permit is easy and the flat is not. Ask about relocation help before you sign, because finding an apartment in Zurich or Geneva is harder than finding the job. Third, a G permit is a way of life, not a formality. The weekly trip home is a legal condition, and the tax office on your home side will have its own view of a Swiss salary. Read the SEM page on the G permit and talk to a tax adviser at home before you accept.

Switzerland is the easiest border in Europe for a Spanish or Italian passport and one of the hardest markets to read from outside. Browse the Swiss listings we track, then compare with Austria, the other German-speaking country with free movement. Read how to land a first job abroad before you apply. Buen camino.

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