Swiss Unemployment Rises

Switzerland saw its unemployment rate increase from 2.5% in August to 2.6% in September for the first time in the past 5 years.

Companies are doing everything they can to decrease costs due to the crisis, as manufacturing was also decrease for the first time in 3 years. The International Monetary Fund said that the global economy is headed for a recession in 2009.

"We're feeling the full impact of the global turmoil,'' said David Marmet, an economist at Zuercher Kantonalbank in Zurich. "It's a crisis of trust given current uncertainties. Companies will curb investment and thus economic growth.''

Europe’s biggest maker of lathes for the watch industry, Tornos SA, is adjusting to the decreased demand by reducing working hours from the auto industry wanes. Zurich based UBS is the European bank that suffered the worst from the credit crisis and is now planning reduce its workforce by about 25,000 until the end of the year.

The number of people looking for jobs rose 2,388 last month to 145,937. Companies had 14,132 open jobs in September, up 369 from the previous month.