When your Swiss job ends

A contract that has ended is not the same situation as a contract that continues with fewer hours. If you are wholly unemployed after working in Switzerland and you still live in France or Germany, the coordinated rule sends the benefit claim to your country of residence. Reduced-hours and partial-unemployment cases stay on a different track, so ask the employer which Swiss procedure applies before treating the job as finished.

The reason for the split is practical: your residence-country employment service needs the Swiss insurance record, but it decides entitlement under its own law. Build the handover file first, then ask the competent institution how resignation, dismissal, fixed-term ending, illness or insolvency affects your individual entitlement.

Ask your employer for the final payslip, salary certificate, employment certificate, written end-of-contract record and the Swiss international employer certificate used for the PD U1. PD U1 is the portable document that confirms insurance and employment periods completed in another participating state.

The Swiss direction matters. If you have already dealt with a Swiss unemployment fund, request PD U1 there. Otherwise, a fund linked to your last Swiss employer can issue it; the German employment authority's current directory says a person who never lived in Switzerland can approach a fund at the employer's registered office. Keep your last 24 months of payslips or salary certificates, ID and the employer certificate together because the issuing fund may need them.

Register with France Travail if you live in France or the Agentur für Arbeit if you live in Germany. Start that file even if PD U1 has not arrived: France Travail's Swiss-border guidance explicitly says the missing document should not delay registration, and the German authority can request foreign insurance records through the coordinated exchange.

Contact the canton that issued your G permit and ask how it records the end of employment. Then tell the pension fund where the second-pillar departure benefit should go; without instructions, the former fund eventually transfers it to the Substitute Occupational Benefit Institution. Check the end date of employer accident cover and ask your current health insurer or competent authority what evidence they need next. If you live in France and an authority confirms that your insurance route must be reconsidered, compare the reviewed France routes before selecting anything.

Keep the contract, end letter, employer and salary certificates, final payslip, PD U1, residence-country registration, permit correspondence, pension transfer confirmation and insurance correspondence. Add a short note showing when each document was requested and received.

That file is useful long after the first claim. A later employer, pension institution or authority may need proof of the exact employment period and why it ended. Your next action is simple: request the employer certificate before access to the employer's systems and contacts disappears.