A recent study published by INSEE reveals that more and more workers from Burgundy-Franche-Comté are crossing the Swiss border to find employment. Hours spent on the road and in traffic jams to work ever further, exchanged for better salary conditions.
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The images speak for themselves: several kilometers of traffic jams filmed at night, forming two veins of light on the border between Haut-Doubs and Switzerland. A photo that impresses, some might even see beauty in it, if the photo was not a daily problem for cross-border workers. Far from being exceptional, the situation captured by drone on Tuesday November 26 is intrinsically linked to the growing number of Burgundians from Franche-Comté who cross the border morning and evening to go to their workplace.
Every day, 48,000 workers from the region cross the Swiss border to go to work. A number which increased by 50% between 2010 and 2021.
An INSEE study, published at the end of November, tackled this phenomenon with an observation: the increase in the distance traveled by cross-border workers in Burgundy-Franche-Comté over the last ten years.
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Despite the use of the term “border worker”, workers in Burgundy-Franche-Comté travel several dozen kilometers every day to get to their place of work. And the distance between their home and their office is only increasing: in 11 years, the average journey has lengthened by 4 km and 31% of journeys are over 50 km, compared to 24 in 2010. Border workers from Burgundy -Franche-Comté must travel an average of 22 km in Switzerland to get to work, twice as much as cross-border workers from Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Grand Est.
“This distance from Swiss employment centers may explain why few cross-border workers of Swiss nationality reside in Burgundy-Franche-Comté.“, specifies INSEE.
This is why the majority of workers live in the Pontarlier area (Haut-Doubs), where the number of cross-border workers has increased significantly: +6,900 between 2010 and 2021! There are also numerous other cross-border workers in the employment zones of Saint-Claude (Jura), Montbéliard (Doubs) and Belfort.
This high concentration of population in a few very targeted areas causes and explains the traffic jams mentioned above. Above all, the crossing points to Switzerland are few in number: the Swiss mountains require buildings to be folded to the relief, which therefore prevents the construction of new asphalt roads. The flow of cross-border workers passing through the commune of Villers-le-Lac, in the Pontarlier employment zone, reached 8,300 individuals daily in 2021, compared to 6,100 in 2010. Further south, the daily flow was 7,600 at the Col de Jougne, compared to 4,500 previously.
► ALSO READ : TESTIMONIALS. “That’s our life, work, traffic jams, work…”: cross-border workers exhausted by endless journeys to Switzerland
One of the reasons given by the statistical institute to explain the increase in the number of cross-border workers is quite simply salary-related: “The Swiss labor market is dynamic, with a strong demand for labor due to the aging of its workforce. It allows cross-border workers to benefit from high salaries.“These remunerations are even more attractive with the increase in the price of the Swiss franc against the euro, which jumped by more than 20% between 2010 and 2021.
A second cause can be put forward to explain this increase: more than one in two cross-border workers work in the industry and therefore find it beneficial to relocate to Switzerland, where there are numerous watchmaking companies. The inhabitants of Burgundy-Franche-Comté working for our Swiss neighbors are therefore half workers, and very often qualified, compared to less than a third in other regions bordering Switzerland such as Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes or Grand Est.
Car, exhaust pipes, traffic jams… Obviously, the carbon footprint of all these trips weighs on the environment. Especially since 97% of cross-border commuters in the region use their car to travel to Switzerland. Once again, the mountainous topography of our neighbors is not favorable to public transport or soft mobility, which are very underdeveloped, according to INSEE.
In total, border workers in Burgundy-Franche-Comté would therefore emit more than 2.1 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year. An ecological assessment which looks gloomy and which risks getting worse with the continued increase in the number of cross-border workers in the coming years.
