Last updated: 2026-08-31

Germany vs Switzerland: what 28,056 live job postings say

Qarera's index holds 25,398 live job postings in Germany and 2,658 in Switzerland. Germany is 9.6 times the size. Language is what separates them. 31.9% of postings in Germany are written in English against 54.9% in Switzerland, which leaves 8,101 openings in Germany and 1,459 in Switzerland that a candidate who reads only English can act on. Germany carries 5.6 times as many.

Every figure on this page is counted from postings collected directly from company career pages and applicant tracking systems, not from other job boards, and it refreshes daily.

MeasureGermanySwitzerland
Live job postingsadvertised right now25,3982,658
Postings written in Englishcount, and share of all postings8,101 (31.9%)1,459 (54.9%)
Remote-friendlyshare of all postings14.3%13.8%
Mention visa or relocation supportshare of English-language postings, not comparable across countries11.2%11.5%
Largest hiring cityshare of the country totalBerlin (20.6%)Zürich (30.5%)

What the language figure does and does not mean

The index records the language a posting is written in. That is not the same as the language the job requires. A German-language advert is not proof that the role needs fluent German, and an English advert is not proof that the workplace runs in English day to day.

What it does measure is the filter a candidate hits first. An advert they cannot read is an advert they cannot answer, whatever the role would have tolerated. That is why the count of English-language postings is a better guide to how open a market feels than the count of postings overall.

Why this page does not rank the two on visa sponsorship

11.2% of English-language postings in Germany mention visa sponsorship or relocation support, against 11.5% in Switzerland. Those two numbers sit in the table above, and they should not be read as a ranking. The systems behind them differ in kind, so a posting's silence means a different thing in each country.

Germany

There is no employer licence. Under the Skilled Immigration Act the route runs on the candidate’s recognised qualification and salary, and the Opportunity Card lets a candidate arrive to look for work without an offer at all. An employer can hire from abroad without holding any special status, so it has little reason to mention one.

Switzerland

Hiring from outside the EU and EFTA runs against annual federal quotas and a labour market priority test. An employer’s ability to hire from abroad is capped rather than licensed, so the constraint sits outside the advert.

The phrase match is blunt in both directions as well. It counts a posting that says sponsorship is available and a posting that says the candidate must already hold a valid work visa, and those point opposite ways. Read the share within one country over time, or across employers inside one country. Do not read it across two immigration regimes. Rules also change faster than any index; check the responsible authority before relying on the summaries above.

Where the work actually is

Zürich holds 30.5% of all postings in Switzerland. Berlin holds 20.6% of Germany's. The second cities pull them further apart: Munich carries 2,900 postings against Berlin's 5,241, while Geneva carries 598 against Zürich's 811.

#GermanyPostingsSwitzerlandPostings
1Berlin5,241Zürich811
2Munich2,900Geneva598
3Hamburg1,249Lausanne157
4Frankfurt am Main1,244Bern106
5Stuttgart1,152Basel82
6Düsseldorf752Sankt Gallen24

Not every posting names a city, so these shares do not add up to 100%. The six cities above account for 49.4% of postings in Germany and 66.9% in Switzerland.

Who is doing the hiring

Neither market is held up by a handful of employers. The largest single advertiser in Germany, Debeka, accounts for 2.5% of the country's live postings. In Switzerland it is Swiss Medical Network, at 4%. The lists below are what sits at the top of each market, which is a question of composition rather than concentration.

Germany

  • Debeka638
  • Airbus452
  • ZEISS Group417
  • Neura Robotics Gmbh373
  • Deutsche Bank261
  • Deloitte218

Switzerland

  • Swiss Medical Network106
  • Rocken®95
  • CERN68
  • Hitachi Energy55
  • Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève55
  • ABB46

Remote work

Remote-friendly postings run at 14.3% in Germany and 13.8% in Switzerland. On this measure the two markets are the same, and a decision between them should not turn on it.

Figures you can quote

Each of these is written to stand on its own, with the sample and the date inside the sentence.

Germany advertises 8,101 live job postings in English to Switzerland's 1,459 (Aug 2026), according to Qarera's live job index.
About 1 in 3 job postings in Germany are written in English (31.9% of 25,398 live postings, Aug 2026), according to Qarera's live job index.
About 1 in 2 job postings in Switzerland are written in English (54.9% of 2,658 live postings, Aug 2026), according to Qarera's live job index.
Zürich holds 30.5% of live job postings in Switzerland, against Berlin's 20.6% in Germany (Aug 2026), according to Qarera's live job index.
11.2% of English-language job postings in Germany mention visa sponsorship or relocation support (910 of 8,101 postings, Aug 2026), according to Qarera's live job index.
11.5% of English-language job postings in Switzerland mention visa sponsorship or relocation support (168 of 1,459 postings, Aug 2026), according to Qarera's live job index.

Citing this figure

Figures for the comparison of job postings in Germany and Switzerland are drawn from 28,056 live postings across both markets, as of 2026-08-31. Postings are collected from company career pages and applicant tracking systems and refreshed daily; see how the index is built and what it cannot tell you.

Free to quote or republish with attribution to Qarera and a link to this page. Please include the date, because the index is live. Citation wording and licence →

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