Drastic restructuring is transforming the Swiss labour market. Globalisation and technological progress are hastening the trend towards a service society. These developments, allied with the increasing flexiblity and individualisation of working hours, offer new opportunities on the labour market, particularly for women. However, the changing structure also contains risks, making the position of poorly qualified members of the labour force, in particular, more difficult.

In recent years, the public perception of the economy has often been of big businesses, multinational companies and globalisation of markets. However, the Swiss economy has a different structure: It consists mainly of SMEs, i.e. companies with fewer than 250 employees (full-time equivalents). In 2013, there were more than 563,000 commercial businesses in Switzerland.

In 2013, SMEs accounted for over 99% of all companies (the percentage had remained unchanged since 1985). And 92% of these were microcompanies, i.e. companies with fewer than 10 employees (full-time equivalents).

Approximately 70% of persons in employment worked in SMEs in 2013 in and 30% in big businesses. However, small companies still play a major role in Switzerland. More than one quarter of jobs are in microcompanies and a further fifth in companies with 10 to 49 employees (full-time equivalents).