Two Lucerne companies have this week joined the long list of Switzerland-based firms that are cutting their workforce.
Two Lucerne companies are affected by the latest wave of redundancies; Andritz Beutler AG in Gettnau, which is laying off 50 employees and Serge Ferrari Tersuisse SA in Emmenbrücke, which is getting rid of 62 employees.
In both cases, redundancies stem from decisions made by foreign parent companies – in Germany and France, respectively.
This latest announcement, on April 28th came on the heels of job cuts announced the same week at the credit card provider Swisscard, which said that 40 jobs will be slashed at the company’s Zurich office from May 1st.
Thousands of jobs
These three firms are joining a long list of other Switzerland-based companies – both local and international – that have slashed thousands of jobs in 2025 or are planning to do so this year.
Among them are Helvetia Baloise insurance giant, where between 1,400 and 1,800 employees will be made redundant over the next three years; UBS bank will scrap 3,000 jobs; and logistics firm Kühne+Nagel is eliminating 2,000 positions.
All the companies in Switzerland – including United Nations agencies in Geneva – that are laying off employees are listed here.
Why are so many Swiss jobs being lost?
The reasons vary but some are politicial – as is the case for Geneva’s UN organisations, which have had to lay off thousands of employees due to the United States withdrawing its funding.
There are also financial factors such as internal restructuring and relocation of operations abroad. For example Switzerland’s biggest telecommunications operator, Swisscom, is relocating between 1,000 and 1,400 of its IT jobs to Latvia and the Netherlands, where salaries are lower than in Switzerland.
Do these redundancies signal a weakening of Switzerland’s famously stable job market?
Not necessarily. According to the KOF Economic Institute, “despite the rise in unemployment, key indicators continue to point to a solid labour market.”
That is because “labour shortage remains relatively high in almost all sectors and the same applies to the number of job vacancies”.
Experts at Economiesuisse, the umbrella organisation for the Swiss business sector, also say that job cuts should not have too great an impact on the Swiss labour market in the long term.
Despite redundancies in many companies, numerous new jobs will also be created, they say.
The unemployment rate is therefore likely to rise only slightly this year to an average of 3 percent from 2.8 percent in 2025.
READ MORE: What’s the outlook for Switzerland’s job market in 2026?
