No. 111, October

In September 2017, the KOF Business Situation Indicator for the Swiss private economy went up again (see G 10). With the sole exception of July, there has been a gradual improvement over the year so far. The recovery of the Swiss economy is progressing.

In contrast to general education courses, vocational education and training (VET) prepares young people for direct entry into the labour market. Although there is a common objective, vocational education and training programmes vary substantially at the international level. Up until now, reference points for international comparison of VET programmes have been scarce, and there has been a distinct lack of theory-based as well as empirically applicable approaches facilitating such comparison.

The financial crisis years have made it clear that the labour markets in many eurozone countries were too rigid to adjust to unexpected macroeconomic changes. As a consequence, the eurozone temporarily lost more than five million jobs and unemployment persistently remained above 10 per cent for a long time. Various structural adjustments combined with the economic recovery have led to an improvement of the labour market situation since 2013.

In the last few years, real wages have risen substantially in Switzerland – despite the historically weak trend in nominal wages. In the coming two years, however, there may be no real growth in wages. A significant and problematic wage differential continues to exist between men and women.

According to the latest KOF Economic Forecast, the next two years look good for the Swiss economy. Aside from positive international trends, this is also due to special factors, such as licence revenues from sport events. The labour market is recovering with a slight time lag and prices are slowly picking up again.