About us

The purpose of the Swiss Job Market Monitor is the continuous scientific monitoring of the Swiss job market. Well-founded information on the development of the job market is of great importance for companies, the working population and policymakers. For businesses in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, forward-looking personnel planning and successful recruitment of skilled workers and specialists is becoming more and more crucial. At the same time, the future careers of individual workers are very much dependent on how the supply of suitable jobs develops. But it is not only employees and employers who need reliable information on the development of job availability and the demand for skills in the workplace; this information is also attracting considerable interest in the political sphere, the vocational education and training sector, and economic research. Even on an international level, the Swiss Job Market Monitor is the first project to provide broad-based information on this, allowing long-term comparisons. The Swiss Job Market Monitor is affiliated with the Institute of Sociology at the University of Zurich. The research team (Kimberly Goulart (PhD), Ann-Sophie Gnehm (lic. phil.), Yanik Kipfer (MA) and Jan Müller (MA)) is headed by Prof. Dr. Marlis Buchmann.

The Swiss Job Market Monitor arose from a research project on the long-term development of job advertisements in the press since 1950, conducted in the framework of the Swiss National Science Foundation research programme 'Zukunft Schweiz' (‘Future Switzerland’). This retrospective project has been gradually expanded since 2002, and transformed into a continuous monitoring of the job market, now incorporating the internet.