Free move­ment of per­sons cre­ates pros­per­ity

Over the past 20 years, an ob­ser­va­tory has been as­sess­ing the im­pact of the free move­ment of per­sons be­tween Switzer­land and the EU on the Swiss labour mar­ket and in the major re­gions of our coun­try. On 4 July 2023, the Swiss Sec­re­tariat for Eco­nomic Af­fairs pub­lished the 19th re­port. It con­firms once again that the free move­ment of per­sons has nei­ther wors­ened con­di­tions for work­ers in Switzer­land nor de­pressed wage lev­els. The op­po­site is the case. Real wages have risen by 0.5 per cent per year over the last twenty years. Even ad­justed to pur­chas­ing power, av­er­age wages in Switzer­land have been among the high­est in Eu­rope for years. Only in Nor­way can one af­ford more with one's salary than in Switzer­land. Since the in­tro­duc­tion of the free move­ment of per­sons, wage dif­fer­en­tials in Eu­rope have in­creased fur­ther in favour of Switzer­land. So, wages in Switzer­land are not under pres­sure be­cause of im­mi­gra­tion.

Ad­justed to pur­chas­ing power, wages in Switzer­land are among the high­est in Eu­rope

Thanks in part to the free move­ment of per­sons, com­pet­i­tive and in­no­v­a­tive Swiss com­pa­nies have been able to con­tin­u­ously in­crease Switzer­land's eco­nomic out­put over the past 20 years. In 2022, this was al­most 50 per cent greater per capita than that of the EU. Thanks to their growth, Swiss com­pa­nies have also been able to cre­ate more jobs that re­quire qual­i­fied work­ers. This is also the rea­son for the pop­u­la­tion growth in re­cent years, as the 19th Ob­ser­va­tion Re­port shows. In ad­di­tion, the un­em­ploy­ment rate in Switzer­land (as de­fined by the ILO), is with 4.1 per­cent at its low­est level since 2008. Ex­cept that in 2008 Switzer­land had 7.7 mil­lion in­hab­i­tants. Today there are 1.2 mil­lion more.

Eco­nomic growth and im­mi­gra­tion ben­e­fit all

Every­one has ben­e­fited from this eco­nomic growth: The state through in­creased tax rev­enues, the so­cial sys­tems through higher con­tri­bu­tions and do­mes­tic work­ers through higher wages. Since the turn of the mil­len­nium, GDP per capita in Switzer­land has risen by 19 per­cent. In ab­solute fig­ures, this means an in­crease of al­most 14,000 US dol­lars per capita. This makes it clear: we all ben­e­fit from eco­nomic growth and im­mi­gra­tion.

Media re­lease Swiss Em­ploy­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (French/Ger­man)