Employment In Switzerland Up Slightly At End Of 2024

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Total employment in Switzerland, excluding agriculture, rose by 0.9% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported on Monday. Businesses, however, are less positive about the outlook.

This content was published on February 24, 2025 - 11:16 3 minutes Keystone-SDA

• Français fr L'emploi en légère hausse en Suisse fin 2024 Original Read more: L'emploi en légère hausse en Suisse fin 202

Companies reported 17.1% fewer vacancies than a year earlier, as they found it slightly less difficult to recruit qualified personnel, the FSO said in a press release. This decline affected both the secondary sector (-17.5%) and the tertiary sector (-17%). Vacancies accounted for 1.6% of all jobs, or 1.9% in the secondary sector and 1.5% in the tertiary sector.

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For the period under review, Swiss companies accounted for a total of 5.5 million jobs, 48,300 more (+0.9%) than a year earlier. The proportion of women in the workforce was 46.7%.

At the end of December 2024, 2.3 million people were working part-time, 69.3% of them women. In terms of full-time jobs, the volume of employment reached 4.3 million, up by 40,800 full-time equivalents (+1%) year-on-year.

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Employment in the secondary sector (industry and construction) rose slightly (+6,700 positions or +0.6%) year-on-year to 1.1 million. Employment in the tertiary sector (services) rose by 41,600 (+1%) to 4.4 million.

Fewer recruitment difficulties

According to seasonally-adjusted figures, the number of jobs in the business sector rose by 6,500 (+0.1%) in the fourth quarter of 2024, compared with the previous quarter. Employment levels thus increased by 600 positions in the secondary sector (+0.1%) and by 5,800 positions (+0.1%) in the tertiary sector.

Difficulties in recruiting qualified personnel, weighted by the number of jobs, eased somewhat. Year-on-year, they fell by 2.5 percentage points to 37.6%.

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Employment forecasts are slightly less optimistic. Companies planning to increase their headcount in the short term accounted for 11.7%, compared with 12.5% in 2023, and those planning to reduce it accounted for 4.7%, compared with 4% a year earlier. The Employment Outlook indicator fell slightly year-on-year, from -0.9% to 1.04%.

Translated from French with DeepL/gw

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