Swiss holiday entitlement calculator (Ferienanspruch)

How ferienanspruch in Switzerland is calculated

*"Der Arbeitgeber hat dem Arbeitnehmer jedes Dienstjahr wenigstens vier Wochen, dem Arbeitnehmer bis zum vollendeten 20. Altersjahr wenigstens fünf Wochen Ferien zu gewähren."* Four weeks, five below 20. On a five-day week: **20 days, or 25**.

**The word doing the quiet work is Dienstjahr.** Every other country in this comparison that pro-rates a part year does it against a fixed year — the UK’s and Germany’s leave year, France’s 1 June to 31 May, Finland’s 1 April to 31 March, Slovakia’s calendar year. Switzerland’s **service** year runs from your hire date and moves with you, so “half the year” means half of yours, and two colleagues hired six months apart are never at the same point in it.

**The age band runs the opposite way from most.** Norway adds days from 60 and Slovakia from 33; Switzerland’s extra week goes to employees *under* 20 and stops *"bis zum vollendeten 20. Altersjahr"* — at the completed twentieth year. Three countries here band by age and no two band in the same direction.

**Article 329b can cut the entitlement, and it has a gate.** If an employee is prevented from working *through their own fault* for **more than one month** in total in a Dienstjahr, the employer *"kann"* — may — reduce the holiday by one twelfth for each full month. At or below a month there is no reduction at all. And art. 329b(2) forbids any cut for absence that is **not** the employee’s fault: it names illness, accident, legal duties, public office and youth leave.

**Five absences can never reduce it.** Art. 329b(3) protects pregnancy up to two months, maternity leave, the other parent’s leave, leave on the death of the mother, care leave and adoption leave. Two more rules shape the holiday without changing its length: art. 329c(1) requires that *"wenigstens zwei Ferienwochen müssen zusammenhängen"*, and art. 329d(2) forbids buying it out while the employment lasts.