Salary gap between men and women narrows in Switzerland

Women in Lausanne march for equality in June 2023 KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT

Nominal wages in Switzerland have risen in recent years, the gap between men and women has got smaller, and the proportion of low wages has remained stable, according to a study.

In 2022, the median salary for a full-time job in the private and public sector was CHF6,788 ($7,630) gross per month (half of employees earned more, half earned less). This is according to the results of the Swiss Wage Structure Survey conducted by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), published on Tuesday.

The survey found that one in ten employees received a gross salary of less than CHF4,487. The top 10% of earners earned more than CHF12,178. According to the FSO, between 2008 and 2022, low and high wages increased more than the wages of the middle class. The wage gap between rich and poor remained largely unchanged. The share of low-wage jobs in the overall economy also remained stable compared to previous surveys.

Gender pay gap

Meanwhile, the difference in median wages between men and women continued to decrease. In 2022, women earned CHF6,397 gross per month, men CHF7,066. The gap was therefore 9.5%. That is two percentage points less than four years previously.

The higher the hierarchical level of the job, the greater the gender pay gap. In 2022, women in jobs with a high level of responsibility earned CHF9,565 gross per month, while men at the same level received CHF11,212, which corresponds to a difference of 14.7%. According to the FSO, this figure also decreased.

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The salary structure survey is a written survey that has been carried out every two years since 1994 among companies in Switzerland. More than 35,000 companies with around 2.3 million employees took part in the latest survey. It serves as a reference for wage negotiations between the social partners, for example.

‘Extremely stable situation’

Roland Müller, director of the Swiss Employers’ Association, spoke of “pleasing findings” and emphasised the “extremely stable wage situation in Switzerland”. In view of the many crises during the survey period, this was “not a given”. All trends were pointing in the right direction.

According to Müller, there was “hardly any room for manoeuvre” for further wage increases. Company profits have been declining in recent years. The fact that the proportion of low-wage jobs has remained stable in this difficult economic environment is remarkable.

The decreasing pay gap between men and women is also pleasing, Müller said. The remaining gap can be explained to a substantial extent by objectifiable factors, he said. For example, women take more time off work after the birth of a child than men do. “To describe this as discriminatory is statistically inadmissible.” Nevertheless, there is no way around a better work-life balance, he said.

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‘Lost decade’

Daniel Lampart, chief economist at the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions, was less satisfied. “Despite the good economic situation, we have to realise that a lost decade is looming for real wages,” he said. The higher wages have been eaten up by inflation, he said.

Lampart harshly criticised the employers: whereas inflation compensation used to be a matter of course, wage negotiations are now being conducted with unprecedented harshness, he said. Employers no longer recognised that every wage should be more or less enough to live on. “More and more households are struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

In his view there is an urgent need for “good minimum wages”, for example for people who work in daycare centres or in long-term care. Apprentice wages also need to be increased. If collective labour agreements cannot be reached, cantonal minimum wages must be enforced.

Employers take a different view: the increasing calls for cantonal minimum wages are completely unfounded, said Müller. It is not up to legislators to pursue social policy via minimum wages, he said.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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