Two Swiss employers’ organizations are concerned about a significant labor shortage within ten years with the retirement of the baby boom generation and propose increasing the participation of women and workers over 65 years to contain the use of foreign labor.
According to a study published Thursday by Economiesuisse and the Swiss Employers’ Union, the labor supply in Switzerland is expected to decrease by 297,000 full-time employees by 2035 even though 163,000 additional employees will be needed to maintain “the prosperity of recent years”, therefore showing a deficit of 460,000 people.
These two employers’ organizations, which produced these projections on the basis of a demographic scenario from the Federal Statistical Office, therefore consider that “the labor shortage will be a major challenge” for the Alpine country.
“We are now talking less about a shortage of qualified labor than about a shortage of labor in general,” notes the study, which underlines that companies are already having more difficulty filling vacant positions.
Swiss companies have long had a large labor pool, but the situation was reversed in 2020 with the gradual retirement of baby boomers.
The free movement of people from the European Union has also been “an important success factor for Switzerland,” add the two employers’ organizations.
“However, the resulting immigration is a concern,” they admit.
The SVP has regularly launched popular referendums concerning immigration, including a recent one entitled “No to a Switzerland with 10 million inhabitants”.
The two employers’ organizations believe that “this approach is not the right one” not only because it ignores “demographic developments” but also because it threatens relations with the EU.
According to them, access to foreign labor is “crucial”. But for immigration to remain “as socially acceptable as possible”, they suggest increasing the participation of women in the labor market, “especially mothers”, many of whom work part-time in the face of difficulties in finding work. affordable childcare facilities.
But they also suggest “better use of the potential of workers aged 65 and over” by ensuring that it is “financially interesting to engage in gainful activity beyond the ordinary retirement age”.
The number of foreign cross-border workers working in Switzerland has more than doubled in the space of around twenty years, reaching just over 390,000 at the end of 2023 according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO)
They are currently at the heart of tensions between Paris and Bern regarding their unemployment benefits.
