Labor market dynamics slow in the first quarter of 2024

It was not us who confirmed this, but the very serious State-controlled Institute for Statistics (ISPf)…

The labor market remains strong in the first quarter of 2024. In fact, the quarterly average of the salaried workforce grew by 3.2% in one year, and the quarterly average of the full-time equivalent (FTE) workforce grew by 3.8% in one year. In the first quarter of 2024, there were an average of 72,730 employees and 63,500 FTEs, or 7,660 more employees and 7,770 more FTEs than in the first quarter of 2019.

Nevertheless, ISPf explains that “Three years of sustained wage employment growth is weakening, with the Market Payroll Employment Index slowing to +2.5% in the period March 2023 to March 2024, compared with +3.6% in September and +4.5% in December 2023.”

If employers in the accommodation and food service sector continue to hire (CVS Index +1.9% between March 2023 and March 2024), growth is dominated by the food service sector, as the hotel industry workforce barely increased compared to the first quarter of 2023 and there was a decline in international hotel patrons.

Distributed revenue 67 billion francs

In the construction sector, the decline in the CVS index that began in February accelerated in March (-2.4% after -0.3%). The entire decline occurred in the building construction sector, which had 80 fewer employees in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the previous year. On the contrary, the civil engineering sector has seen a continuous increase in the workforce, driven by Olympic-related work, with 60 new employees. Commercial work (+3.4%) is the most resistant to the economic slowdown. Compared to the first quarter of 2023, the number of employees in this sector increased by 400, three quarters of whom are employed in retail.

Overall, allocated wages continue to grow (6.7%) compared to the first quarter of 2023, reaching nearly 67 billion CFP in the first quarter of 2024, as the combined growth in hours worked (3.8% annual average growth) and average wages (2.8%) increases.

Source: ISPf