Job centres and bedroom towns: how Swiss commuting works

A few cities absorb the commuters

The commuting balance subtracts the employed residents of a municipality from the people who work there. A positive balance means that more people come to work than employed people live there. Zürich has the largest balance by a wide margin, 179,045, ahead of Bern with 84,399 and Basel with 44,650.

Next come Geneva with 35,816 and Lausanne with 35,004. The five municipalities at the head of the table are the five largest cities, and their balances dwarf those of every other place. St. Gallen and Lucerne have balances of 33,903 and 21,739.

One name on the list is a surprise. Kloten has only 22,017 inhabitants, yet it is ranked 8 of 2,115, with a balance of 21,481. The municipality hosts the main airport of the region, a large employer for people who live elsewhere.

Each of these cities is the economic centre of a wide area, with offices, hospitals, universities and public administration that draw workers from the surrounding municipalities. Their balances therefore measure a role in the regional economy, not only the size of the population.

The mirror image: residential suburbs

At the other end of the table the sign changes. A negative balance means that more employed people live in the municipality than work there. Riehen has the lowest balance of any municipality, −5,563, followed by Onex at −3,914 and Wädenswil at −3,798.

These are not tiny villages. Riehen counts 7,050 out-commuters and receives 1,487 workers from outside. Wädenswil, Wettingen and Uster show the same pattern on a similar scale, with 8,809, 8,147 and 13,107 out-commuters. Their balances are negative because the jobs are in the nearby city, while the homes are here.

The list is dominated by suburbs of the big job centres, in the cantons of Zurich, Geneva and Basel-Stadt. Maur and Veyrier are residential suburbs with out-commuting shares of 86.1% and 87.2%, well above the median of 80.8%.

Resorts and villages keep work close to home

Shares tell a different story from counts. In the median municipality, 80.8% of employed residents work in another municipality, so leaving home for work is the norm. A few places break the rule: Zermatt sends out only 3.3% of its employed residents, Samnaun only 3.8% and Davos only 9.0%.

These are mountain communities where hotels, shops, lifts and farms provide local jobs. Zermatt even runs a surplus of 1,085, so some of its staff live in other municipalities. The other side of the same coin is the share of local workers who live elsewhere: it is only 2.3% in Val Müstair and 2.9% in Samnaun. These communities mostly employ their own residents.

At the opposite extreme, Bellmund sends out 95.3% of its employed residents and Bettens sends out 95.0%. In such places the home municipality is above all a place to live.

Crossing the cantonal border

Commuting also crosses cantonal borders. In the median municipality, 16.4% of employed residents work in another canton. In some places the share is far higher: Nuglar-St. Pantaleon reaches 82.4%, Büren (SO) 82.2% and Hofstetten-Flüh 81.5%.

The six highest shares are all in Solothurn. These villages lie next to a large city, so their residents work across the cantonal line while the village itself stays in a different canton.

The large cities follow another logic. In Basel, 28.7% of employed residents work in another canton, against 10.1% in Zürich and 5.3% in Geneva. The canton of Basel-Stadt is very small, so even a short trip crosses its border.

At the other extreme, Zermatt and Verzasca report 0.0%, so no employed resident works in another canton.

Job centres, few cars

The cities that absorb the most commuters need the fewest cars. The three largest commuting balances belong to Zürich, Bern and Basel. Those same three municipalities have the lowest car ownership in the country, from 225.6 per 1,000 inhabitants in Basel to 235.4 per 1,000 inhabitants in Zürich, with Bern in between. Geneva and Lausanne are not far off, with 257.5 per 1,000 inhabitants and 266.8 per 1,000 inhabitants.

At the other end, Morcote has 844.3 per 1,000 inhabitants, ahead of Silvaplana and Ronco sopra Ascona. The median municipality has 557.2 per 1,000 inhabitants. Dense cities with good public transport cut the need for a private car, while scattered communities depend on it.

What the balance leaves out

A balance counts people, so it grows with the size of the municipality and says little about how typical a commute is. Zürich has 65,738 out-commuters, the most of any municipality, yet that is only 27.5% of its employed residents, because most work inside its large territory.

Winterthur shows how a municipality can be a source and a destination at once. It receives 36,580 in-commuters and sends out 30,590 residents, so its balance of 5,990 hides two large flows.

Boundaries matter too. When two neighbouring villages sit inside one municipality, a trip between them is not counted as commuting, so a municipality with a large territory shows a lower out-commuting share than its real mobility might suggest.

The figures are counts of people for 2020. They say nothing about distance, travel time or the means of transport, and the share indicators cover fewer municipalities than the balance because some figures are missing.