Swiss Labour Market Looks Robust
The Swiss labour market has been developing positively over the last five years, even compared with other countries. This is shown by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO)’s paper titled 2018 Labour Market Indicators, which reviewed the Swiss labour market between 2012 and 2017. Factors such as number of employees, wages and unemployment rate were scrutinised.
More Pay and More Workers
Between 2013 and 2017 actual wages in Switzerland increased on average by 0.9% per annum. There are still differences between men and women, however: in 2016 the average gross wages amounted to 6011 Swiss francs for women and 6830 Swiss francs for men. Many of these wage gaps can be explained with factors such as position in the hierarchy, length of service and education, but in 42.4% of the cases the difference is unjustified. And the wage gap between the Swiss and foreign workers is also large: while the average pay of the Swiss is 6808 Swiss francs, foreigners earn only 5893 Swiss francs.
In 2017 the Swiss working population numbered five million people. This signifies a 7.3% increase since 2012. Especially the number of foreign nationals working in Switzerland has strongly gone up: their share has increased by 14.2% up to 1.7 million, whereas for the Swiss this increase was 4.1%.
Continuing Differences Between Men and Women and Between the Swiss and Foreigners
At the same time, the unemployment rate has slightly fallen. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a specialised agency of the United Nations, it dropped from 4.6% to 4.5% between the last quarter of 2016 and that of the previous year. Thus, compared to other countries, the Swiss labour market scores very well. The average unemployment rate in the European Union is 7.3%. With 2.4% and 2.6%, respectively, only the Czech Republic and Iceland have less unemployed persons. Job seekers are more often women (4.9%) than men (4.3%). Here, too, it is more foreign nationals (7.5%) than the Swiss (3.5%) who are looking for a job.
The odds that you will find a job are higher now, however, because, between the end of 2012 and that of 2017, the number of vacancies has grown by 20% from 51,000 to 62,000. In particular the part-time employment model is becoming increasingly more popular, which is used by 58.3% of women and 18% of men. Although it is still considerably less men who work part-time, between 2012 and 2017 their percentage grew by 37.2%. During the same period the percentage of women who work on a part-time basis increased by 6.5%.
Source: 2018 Labour Market Indicators, Federal Statistical Office (FSO)
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