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A third of Swiss industrial companies on short-time work

Published on March 17, 2025

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A third of Swiss industrial companies on short-time work — One third of industrial companies on short-time work Keystone-SDA

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Employees at many small and medium-sized industrial companies in Switzerland are currently working shortened hours, including a third of manufacturing firms.

This content was published on March 17, 2025 - 10:48

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This is the result of a survey conducted by the umbrella organisation Swissmechanic.

Although the majority of companies are not resorting to short-time working, small and medium-sized companies are particularly affected, Swissmechanic said. Around 45% of companies with 10 to 49 employees and 29% of companies with 50 to 249 employees had recently introduced short-time working.

The duration of short-time working varies. A good third of the companies affected have been working short-time for more than six months.

A good quarter have been doing so for three to six months and around 30% have implemented short-time working for one to three months. In a good 40% of companies, short-time working affects a maximum of half of the workforce, while in 28% between three quarters and 100% of employees are affected.

Dissatisfaction with authorities

For just under half of the companies, the application for authorisation of short-time working was implemented relatively quickly, but still with some bureaucratic hurdles. Only around a fifth of companies found the approval process to be very quick and unbureaucratic.

For 17% of companies, the process was lengthy and bureaucratic. If the proportion of short-time work is only low, the effort involved often exceeds the actual benefit. Swissmechanic therefore sees a need for action, without proposing specific measures.

The association assumes that around three quarters of companies will continue to work short-time for longer. Only around a quarter of those affected expect the measures to end soon.

Translated from German with DeepL/mga

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

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