I tried starting a manufacturing site in Switzerland. We wanted to get the Swiss Made badge (70% parts sourced in Switzerland and all major assembly steps done by Swiss employees). An hourly employee had basic rate of CHF 45 an hour and they had to be paid some ridiculous benefits totaling up to like CHF 120 an hour. Apart from the cost, the biggest issue is that you can’t fire them essentially if you hire them on “permanent basis”. It’s impossible to do anything there for a scrappy small business.

Modern Switzerland is much of a socialist state. It’s lost all the things that made it a great place for business. Zurich is still a small tech hub for startups but mostly services and finance. Labor is usually hired in US or elsewhere.

About the only place in EU that's pro-small business is Italy. It still has some 50% of the GDP from companies less than 50 employees.

Pretty much what I expected. Also, I'm surprised that the Swiss Franc is worth exactly the same as the US Dollar. Is it pegged to it? 45USD per hour for an hourly manufacturing job is shocking as well, that's about $90k per year. I'm sure it makes it a nice place to live but God help them if they ever need to get something done in a hurry. I imagine they have to tightly control immigration as well.