Swiss Wage Growth Stabilized Just Under 2%, SNB Researchers Find

(Bloomberg) — Wage growth in Switzerland has stabilized below the upper end of the central bank’s inflation target, according to a monthly salary measure developed by Swiss National Bank economists.

August saw an increase of 1.9% from a year earlier, the SNB said in a research note published Wednesday, which for the first time unveiled the monthly gauge based on anonymized bank transactions.

The data show the extent of the delay of so-called second-round effect, with the impact of global inflation only feeding through into Swiss pay a year later. The pace of increases started slowing again at the start of this year and has since inched down further.

Switzerland avoided a wage-price spiral as unions didn’t succeed in their push for raises of as much as 5%. Instead, employees faced three years of dropping real salaries, including the biggest loss since 1942.

The SNB gathers the transaction data underlying the new gauge from the Swiss real-time gross settlement system. This makes it available much quicker than other wage-growth measures, according to the researchers. This way, it’s “providing valuable information for the conduct of monetary policy,” they said.

Publication is a one-time glance into the central bank’s research and no updates on the gauge will be released, the SNB said.

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