Which jobs are most in demand in Switzerland?
Updated:
In short
By number of postings, retail and hospitality lead with around five percent of all adverts each, followed by nursing and care at roughly four and a half percent and IT at a good three and a half. That answers "where are there the most jobs".
"Which jobs are most urgently needed" has a different answer — and it is the more useful one. Measured by how long adverts stay open, the trades lead by a distance at a median age of around 41 days, followed by nursing and care at about 24. Market-wide it is 18 days.
An advert that stays open is one that has not found anyone. That is precisely where competition for a role is lowest — and where applying pays off most, even if you do not tick every requirement.
Share of adverts per occupational field, assigned via the job title. Ongoing analysis, as of August 2026.
- Retail and hospitality each account for around a twentieth of all adverts.
- Trades adverts stay open at a median age of around 41 days — more than twice the market as a whole.
- In nursing, roughly one role in five is part-time, close to four times the market average.
- In IT roughly one role in four needs no national language; in the trades it is practically zero.
- In the trades and in commercial administration, roughly one advert in ten is an entry-level or apprenticeship position.
Volume and urgency are two different questions
Most "in-demand jobs" lists count postings. But that mainly measures how large an occupational field is and how much turnover it has — not how hard a role is to fill. Retail and hospitality top the list because many people work in them and move often, not because nobody can be found.
The better measure is how long an advert lives. A role that disappears after a week was easy to fill. One still open after six weeks has found nobody. Across the whole index the median age of open adverts is 18 days — that is the yardstick against which every field can be measured.
By that measure the trades lead clearly: around 41 days, more than double. Then nursing and care at about 24 days, marketing and communications at around 22, and IT and logistics at roughly 18 each. Retail, hospitality, commercial roles and engineering sit at around 15 to 16 days, below the average.
For you as an applicant that inverts the ranking. Where adverts stay open, employers are under pressure, the field of candidates is small, and willingness to train someone up or bend the requirements is considerably greater.
Trades and construction: the country's longest search
At a median age of around 41 days, trades adverts stay open longer than in any other field we measure. Electricians, plumbing, carpentry, assembly, installation, sheet metal work — these firms are visibly searching longer than they would like.
Two further characteristics sharpen the picture. First, part-time is practically non-existent here, under one percent — these are full positions. Second, roughly one advert in ten is explicitly an entry-level, apprenticeship or trainee position, a markedly higher share than the market overall.
The price of entry is language. Practically no trades role manages without a national language, and roughly seven in ten explicitly require German. That is the hardest condition in this field — harder than the formal qualification.
If you bring a trades qualification and solid German, this is statistically the market with the most favourable ratio of open roles to applicants in the entire country.
Nursing: many roles, open a long time, and part-time as the rule
Nursing is the only field combining both forms of demand: it accounts for roughly four and a half percent of all adverts and at the same time carries a well above-average median age of around 24 days. Many roles, and they stay open.
The most striking feature is the part-time share: roughly one nursing role in five is advertised as part-time, against about five and a half percent market-wide. If you need reduced hours, nursing offers something proportionally almost four times as often as elsewhere.
Here too language is the central hurdle: roughly six in ten nursing adverts require German, and only around two percent manage with English alone. That matches the work — nursing is communication with patients, relatives and the team.
For new arrivals with a nursing qualification this is the clearest order of operations in the whole Swiss labour market: sort out recognition of your diploma, get German to conversational level, then apply. The rest is easier in this field than in almost any other.
IT and marketing: the English-speaking part of the market
These two fields differ fundamentally from the rest of the market. In IT roughly one role in four requires no national language, in marketing roughly one in three — against about one in seven market-wide. If you are searching without German or French, you are searching here almost by necessity.
The price is seniority. In IT roughly one advert in three carries a senior or leadership title; in marketing nearly half. Those are the highest values of any field measured, and they confirm in miniature what holds for the English-language market overall: open at the top end, narrow at the entry level.
Part-time is rare in both fields — roughly two percent in IT, about six in marketing. If you need reduced hours you are worse served here than in nursing, education or retail.
Median age sits at roughly 18 days in IT, exactly the market average, and around 22 in marketing. Both fields are in demand, but neither is as hard to fill as the trades or nursing — there are simply more applicants.
What these numbers do not capture
We assign fields via the job title. Occupations with inconsistent naming are therefore under-counted, and a title like "project manager" lands in different fields depending on the wording. Read the shares as orders of magnitude, not as official statistics.
More importantly, not every occupation recruits through general job portals. Public school teaching runs largely through cantonal portals, parts of healthcare through sector platforms, and academic roles through university sites. Education roles therefore appear with a very small share in our analysis — that is a statement about the channel, not about demand.
Also invisible is whatever is never advertised. In small firms and the trades especially, a substantial share of roles is filled through contacts before an advert exists — which understates rather than overstates the already high pressure in those fields.
And finally we measure demand, not pay. A field with long search times is a good argument in a salary negotiation, but it is not a promise of a high starting salary.
How to use this in your search
If you have a choice, follow the lifespan of adverts rather than their number. A field where roles stay open is more forgiving of an incomplete profile and more likely to invite you in.
If you are staying in a heavily contested field — retail, hospitality, commercial administration — shift your advantage to geography. These fields exist everywhere, and competition for any single role is lower outside the big centres.
If you lack a national language, choosing the field is the single most important decision: IT and marketing are open, trades and retail practically closed. That is not about your qualification but about the work itself.
And if you need reduced hours, follow the part-time share rather than the volume of roles. Nursing, education and retail advertise part-time routinely; IT, engineering and the trades almost never.
What people report
Reports from the Swiss market currently recur that even experienced professionals with strong CVs search for several months. That does not contradict the open roles: the fields with the longest search times are precisely not the ones where most applicants are looking.
Recurring theme in LinkedIn posts on current conditions in the Swiss labour market, reviewed August 2026.
Hiring professionals repeatedly describe applications to advertised specialist roles without the required qualification and with no visible connection to the role. In fields with long search times there is more tolerance for that — but the connection to the role still has to be made.
Recurring theme in German-language LinkedIn posts from recruiting professionals, reviewed August 2026.
Shares and age figures from our ongoing analysis of the Swiss job adverts we track, as of August 2026. Occupational fields are assigned via the job title; occupations with inconsistent naming and those recruiting mainly through cantonal or sector portals are under-counted. Median age measures how long currently open adverts have been online since publication. We publish shares, not absolute inventory figures.
Sources
Related questions
What our job index says about the Swiss market
Computed live from our own index, not quoted from a study. Shares only, as of today.
Language the advert is written in
- Deutsch
- 60%
- English
- 23%
- Français
- 13%
- Italiano
- 3%
Of adverts that state a language requirement, the share asking for
- Deutsch
- 70%
- English
- 43%
- Français
- 21%
- Italiano
- 3%
19% posted in the last 7 days · Largest markets: Zürich 18% · Bern 10% · Genève 5% · Basel 5%