Switzerland sees a rise in job cuts due to AI

New analysis of the Swiss job market has revealed that certain industries are being impacted by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and more companies are cutting jobs.

These sectors are facing redundancies in Switzerland

Many workers have been hit by job cuts across Switzerland in recent months. UBS recently announced 3.000 fresh redundancies, Helvetia Baloise will remove 2.600 roles, Kühne+Nagel has announced 2.000 job cuts and Sunrise is to cut 147 positions, according to Nau. SRF further calculated that, following UBS's takeover of Credit Suisse, over 36.000 jobs were lost over three years.

Some sectors, particularly finance, insurance, media and manufacturing, are seeing more job cuts. Mathias Binswanger, economist and economics professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Olten, says AI plays a role in these cuts: “AI is also making certain jobs redundant in various industries. This particularly affects newcomers to the job market.”

Certain roles are also more likely to be affected. “The more a job involves programming, data analysis and data processing, the more easily it can be replaced by AI itself,” continues Binswanger. In these roles, AI can perform tasks “better and faster in most cases”. 

Unemployment rate remains low in Switzerland

Despite several job cuts across a number of industries, there is a relatively low unemployment rate of around three percent and Switzerland is “still doing well”, according to Binswanger. Many Swiss banks are also seeing a shift in the types of roles needed, moving away from data-processing roles towards admin and compliance roles.

Other sectors are much less likely to be affected by AI, including those providing services such as hairdressing or physiotherapy. Healthcare and construction continue to have high demand for additional workers.