Foundation Report July 2023: The end of a strong growth
The number of startups in Switzerland stood at 4272 in July 2023, ending the strong growth of recent months. Compared to the strong previous month of June, 13.61% fewer new companies were founded and measured against July last year, an increase of 1.23% was recorded.
Zurich is holding up well
Zurich saw the creation of 806 new companies, making it the region with the smallest drop this month. There were 6.39% fewer start-ups than in June and 3.36% fewer than last year. In Central Switzerland, the contraction was also less than 10% with a loss of 9.55% and compared to last year there was an increase of 9.65%. A total of 625 new companies were founded, most of them in the canton of Zug. Zug defied the negative trend and achieved a growth of 5.71% measured against last month with 259 startups. Compared to July 2022, this represented an increase of 8.37%.
French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino suffer
The region with the highest number of startups was also caught by the contraction, resulting in 1184 startups in French-speaking Switzerland. This means that 12.68% fewer companies were founded than in the strong June. Measured against last year, the difference is -3.43%, which is less drastic. In Vaud, 438 new companies were founded, resulting in an increase of 1.57% compared to June and 2.10% compared to July 2022, respectively.
The negative trend hit Ticino particularly hard and the canton lost 24.07 percentage points, leaving 164 new companies formed. Last year, the result was similar with 171 startups and the deviation was 4.09%.
Losses with a silver lining
No region was spared and thus the 1000 mark was no longer cracked in Northwestern Switzerland. In total, there were 982 new start-ups and a decrease of 18.71% compared to the previous month, although an increase of 6.97% was recorded compared to the previous year. The canton of Bern showed the strongest performance with 353 startups and a 12.42% year-over-year increase.
The picture was similar in Eastern Switzerland, as a loss of 16.64% was measured and the total number of startups was 511. There was a silver lining in this region as well, with 2% more companies being founded compared to July 2022. As in the previous months, St. Gallen was the canton with the highest number of start-ups and recorded 228 new companies. This result represented a contraction of 11.97% from the previous month and a slight decrease of 0.87% from last year.
Outlook
July could not hold a candle to the strong previous month and a noticeable slump was recorded, although in relation to last year there was a slight increase from 4220 to 4272 start-ups. The contraction from June to July is in line with the trend of the last few years, and so a further slump is to be expected in August.
