Healthcare staff shortage in Switzerland

On 27 November 2025, the Adecco Group Switzerland and the Job Market Monitor at the University of Zurich published a figure that most summaries read as an all-clear. The Skills Shortage Index Switzerland (Fachkräftemangel Index Schweiz) stood around 22 per cent below the previous year. The number of vacancies fell by 8 per cent, the number of jobseekers rose by 17 per cent, and only 4 of 32 occupational groups still counted as affected by a shortage.

One of those four groups is specialists in health professions. They have held first place without interruption since 2022.

That is where the real news sits. When a labour market eases across the board and one field stays untouched, the shortage there follows no economic cycle that will eventually turn. It has a different cause, and it calls for an answer that goes beyond faster job adverts and larger budgets.

Demand keeps rising, and the rise is predictable

Demography delivers the most reliable forecast any workforce plan can get. In September 2025 the Swiss Health Observatory (Obsan), the federal body that analyses data on the Swiss health system, updated its national demand projections on the basis of the new population scenarios published by the Federal Statistical Office in April 2025. The findings:

• Total demand for long-term care rises by 43 per cent by 2040.
• Demand for long-term care beds grows by around half by 2040.
• Spitex hours, the nursing and care hours delivered in people's homes by Switzerland's home care organisations, rise from 18.1 million to 27.3 million.
• With care policy unchanged, the long-term care beds available in 2023 run out in all four regions studied before 2030.

What makes this notable is that the projection has already been revised downwards. The new population scenarios expect fewer people in the very oldest age groups than the 2020 scenarios did, and the updated bed requirement matches the low scenario of the earlier study. Even the cautious calculation shows a jump in demand that the provision available today will struggle to absorb.

Every additional bed, every additional home care hour and every supported living arrangement needs staff. Other healthcare providers compete for these people, and so does every employer outside the sector that offers reliability and predictable hours.

The biggest pool of health professionals is already qualified

This is where the analysis becomes directly useful for employers. Using the structural survey of the Federal Statistical Office, Obsan examined how many people qualified in a health profession still practise it. The result:

Occupational group	Share who have left the profession
Registered nurses	around 42%
Nursing staff with an upper secondary qualification	around 42%
Midwives	around 42%
Medical and technical professions	around 42%
Doctors	31%
Range across all health professions	27 to 46%

A person counts as having left the profession once they have stopped working, changed occupation, or moved into the same occupation outside the health sector. Among registered nurses, exits from employment altogether run above 14 per cent and changes of occupation above 15 per cent.

Work that through for a single organisation. An institution with 200 nursing staff that records 20 departures a year, half of them a permanent exit from the profession, has to recruit 20 people to keep its headcount steady, and it enters a market that ten of its own former employees have just walked out of. Preventing four of those ten exits delivers the same result as a successful recruitment campaign, without a single extra franc spent on visibility.

That comparison sits at the heart of every workforce strategy that holds up in healthcare. Inflow is hard to raise, and outflow responds to what an employer does. Outflow is also the larger of the two figures.

Recruitment abroad carries much of the load, and it has limits

One third of registered nurses in Switzerland hold a foreign diploma. In border cantons such as Geneva the share exceeds 65 per cent. Care provision today rests on this immigration, and that will hold for the foreseeable future.

As the single answer to the demand gap, this route meets three limits. First, recruitment is moving increasingly towards eastern EU countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, whose populations are ageing in parallel and whose own care systems face the same pressure. Second, the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, adopted in 2010, is voluntary, and countries are urged to observe it. Third, months pass between a signed offer and a first productive shift, taken up by diploma recognition, language certificates and induction.

For planning purposes, recruitment abroad belongs in the channel mix, needs a well-run process behind it, and works alongside the measures you take inside your own organisation. Companies that are only now building their Swiss operation will find the employer registrations, permit quotas and payroll duties set out in our guide to hiring in Switzerland.

What parliament is deciding right now

Swiss voters approved the nursing care initiative (Pflegeinitiative) in November 2021. It added Art. 117b to the Federal Constitution, which obliges the Confederation and the cantons to secure adequate nursing care, and it is being implemented in two stages.

The first stage is in force. Since 1 July 2024, cantons can apply each year for federal contributions towards the additional training they fund. The Confederation and the cantons are providing close to one billion francs over eight years, with the Confederation covering up to 50 per cent of cantonal spending.

The second stage covers working conditions and sits in the middle of the political process. On 28 April 2026 the National Council (Nationalrat), the larger chamber of the Swiss parliament, was the first chamber to handle the bill and debated it for more than six hours. It cut back the proposal of the Federal Council (Bundesrat), the seven-member Swiss government, sharply:

• The weekly maximum working time stays at 50 hours. The proposed reduction to 45 hours found no majority.
• Standard working time is capped at 42 hours, with no power for the Federal Council to lower that figure further.
• Overtime is compensated with time off of at least equal length, or with normal pay plus a supplement of at least 25 per cent.
• Where Sunday and public holiday work is permanent or regularly recurring, compensatory rest comes with a pay supplement of at least 25 per cent.
• A right to compensation for roster changes applies to shifts announced less than four weeks before the assignment, at a rate of at least 25 per cent.
• Cantons must set requirements on staffing levels, and these requirements and compliance with them are to be published every year per institution and per care area.

The bill now sits with the Council of States (Ständerat), the second chamber, and the funding remains open. In the run-up to the debate, nursing staff handed over a petition carrying almost 190'000 signatures.

Two practical conclusions follow for employers. The first concerns timing. The legal framework will land in a more moderate form than the original proposal, and it will arrive later. Employers who wait for it lose people in the meantime to employers who already deliver.

The second conclusion is the more interesting one. With the publication duty now agreed, staffing per institution and per care area becomes a publicly visible figure. Applicants, relatives and journalists will read it. Investing today in roster stability and staffing builds an advantage that becomes visible to everyone once the rules take effect.

Five levers that work before the job advert

For its "Comeback" study, Bern University of Applied Sciences asked why registered nurses leave, why they return and what keeps them in the profession. The findings are strikingly practical, and they match what organisations describe to us in practice.

1. Part-time down to small workloads. The most frequent reason given for a career break was the difficulty of combining work and family, and the respondents were specific: the employer they had at the time offered no way to cut their workload or to work a small part-time percentage. An employer whose lowest workload on offer is 60 per cent loses people who would have stayed at 30 per cent. Ten people at 30 per cent cover three full-time positions, and small workloads are the ones people keep for years.

2. Rostering that can reflect preferences. The second reason given was the failure to adapt rostering to family needs. The four-week deadline agreed by the National Council marks the lower edge of what is reasonable. It works as an employer promise once it is kept, and that reliability can be measured and communicated.

3. Returners as a channel in their own right. Asked what made a return to the profession succeed, respondents named continuous support during induction. What matters is a written plan that sets out how the support runs, who provides it and for how long. Returners bring experience, they know the work and they make a deliberate decision, and they are rarely approached directly.

4. Recognition that happens day to day. According to the study, what motivates people to stay is enjoyment of the work, the variety of the tasks, teamwork, the recognition they get and the compatibility of work and family. Four of these five factors sit within the influence of the direct line manager. Investment in leadership quality at ward level therefore works directly on the exit rate.

5. A skill mix with clear roles. When qualified professionals spend a substantial share of their time on tasks that other qualification levels can carry, the organisation makes its own shortage worse. A clear split of tasks between healthcare assistants (Fachangestellte Gesundheit, the federal apprenticeship in care), support staff and administration creates capacity from the workforce already in place.

Recruitment that works in a shortage market

Once these foundations are in place, execution decides the outcome. Four points make the difference in practice.

Speed decides who gets the hire. In a market where qualified professionals hold several options, the first complete offer usually wins. An employer who lets a week pass between application and response negotiates against an employer who has already said yes. Measure the time from vacancy to first working day, broken into stages, and work on the longest stage.

The advert should answer the questions people actually ask. Applicants in healthcare want to know: how far in advance is the roster published? How often does it change at short notice? How many people work the night shift on the ward? How long does induction take and who provides it? Is a workload below 50 per cent possible? Putting those five answers into the advert produces fewer applications and considerably better matched ones.

A realistic preview lowers early turnover. A trial day on the ward and an open conversation about the hard sides of the role cost little, and they prevent hires that end after four months. Every mis-hire you avoid saves the cost of recruiting twice over.

Check the cost model. Published Swiss examples cited in our recruitment guide range from 18 to 30 per cent of annual salary, depending on provider model and salary. This is an observed sample, not a universal market standard. Our article on recruitment without a placement commission shows how a transparent model billed by the hour compares.

The four figures that explain your situation

The usual turnover rate falls short as a management figure, because it treats a move to the neighbouring hospital the same way as a permanent exit from the profession. These four figures say more:

1. Exit rate from the profession: how many of your leavers leave healthcare altogether? Ask the question in the exit interview and record the answer.
2. Time to first working day, broken into advertising, selection, offer and start.
3. Share of returners among all new starters. In most organisations it sits close to zero, and that is an opportunity.
4. Rate of short-notice roster changes, meaning the share of shifts that were fixed less than four weeks in advance. The second stage will make this figure relevant in any case.

What we contribute

The analysis leads to an uncomfortable and useful conclusion. Most of the work sits in the organisation, and that is exactly where we start.

In our HR check we go through your leaver and joiner data, your rostering practice and your induction process, and we name the places where the effort pays back fastest. When you are hiring, we work as your outsourced HR function in your name and on your behalf: recruitment support billed by the hour, applications arrive with you, and the hiring decision stays with you. Where you want relief from the administration around employment, salary and social insurance, we take it on as your external HR department at a published fixed price. Our guide to outsourcing HR as an SME shows when that adds up.

Would you like to know where your organisation stands? Let us talk it through. No obligation. Book an intro call.

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Sources: Adecco Group Switzerland and Swiss Job Market Monitor of the University of Zurich, Skills Shortage Index Switzerland 2025 (27 November 2025) · Swiss Health Observatory, report 09/2025 "Demand for care of older people and long-term care in Switzerland" · Swiss Health Observatory, report 01/2021 "Exits from the profession and headcount of health personnel in Switzerland" · Bern University of Applied Sciences, study "Comeback: returning to nursing and staying in the profession" · Federal Office of Public Health, implementation of the nursing care initiative, Art. 117b of the Federal Constitution · Parliamentary Services, report on the National Council debate of 28 April 2026.