Average Salary in Switzerland in 2026 (By Role, City and Industry)

The P10 and P90 figures are the ones to keep in mind. Eight in ten full-time employees in Switzerland earned between roughly CHF 4,600 and CHF 12,500 a month in 2024. An offer outside that band is not wrong, but it is unusual, and it should come with a reason.

The figures come from the FSO's earnings structure pages and the full press release, published on 25 November 2025. The English release contains only the summary; the detail is in German, French and Italian.

Most mistakes in comparing Swiss salaries come from comparing different things. The ESS figure is:

• Gross, including the employee's own social security contributions.
• Standardised to full time: 40 hours a week over 4⅓ weeks, so part-time and full-time jobs can be compared.
• Inclusive of extras: the October wage plus regular bonuses, benefits in kind, shift, night and Sunday allowances, one twelfth of the 13th-month salary and one twelfth of annual special payments or bonuses.
• Exclusive of family and child allowances.

So if an employer quotes you CHF 7,000 "times 13", the comparable FSO figure is CHF 7,583 (7,000 × 13 ÷ 12), not CHF 7,000.

The FSO defines the median as the wage at which half of jobs pay more and half pay less. The average, or mean, is the sum of all wages divided by the number of employees. The press release says explicitly that the two are not to be confused.

The difference matters because pay is lopsided. A few very high salaries in banking or senior management raise the mean without moving the median, so an "average Swiss salary" quoted as a mean will look higher than what a typical employee earns. The FSO uses the median as its reference value for descriptive figures, and so does this page. When a website gives a single "average salary in Switzerland" without saying which, and without a year, I would not rely on it.

The FSO's table by economic section gives the median together with the lower quartile (Q1, 25% earn less) and upper quartile (Q3, 25% earn more). Gross monthly wage, full-time, 2024 ESS:

Sections are broad. Manufacturing, for example, mixes food production with pharmaceuticals. The FSO also quotes medians for narrower branches in 2024: the tobacco industry CHF 14,304, banks CHF 10,723, pharmaceuticals CHF 10,159, information technology CHF 9,874 and research and development CHF 9,139 at the top; engineering CHF 7,632, wholesale CHF 7,478, aviation CHF 7,134 and construction CHF 6,616 in the middle; retail CHF 5,214, hotels and restaurants CHF 4,744, accommodation CHF 4,715 and personal service activities CHF 4,496 at the bottom.

Low-paid jobs cluster in the same branches. The share of jobs below the low-wage threshold was 56.3% in personal services, 48.7% in accommodation, 47.8% in food service and 24.6% in retail, against 0.6% in banks and 0.8% in insurance. For a closer look at one high-paying branch, see the pharma jobs guide.

The FSO does not publish official medians for individual cities. It publishes seven major regions, each a group of cantons, so a city figure means the figure for its region. I have taken out the city ranges this page used to carry, because no FSO table backs them.

The P10 and P90 values come from the chart data on the same FSO page. The spread is wider at the top than at the bottom. Between Zurich and Ticino the P90 differs by almost CHF 4,000 a month, while the P10 differs by less than CHF 1,000. The FSO attributes regional differences largely to where high value-added industries are concentrated, and by the structure of regional labour markets.

The FSO publishes wages by occupation group, not by job title, so this page no longer quotes figures for software engineers, product managers or other named roles. Every job in the survey is coded in the Swiss occupational classification CH-ISCO-19, and the FSO reports medians for its major groups and four skill levels. It also measures professional position and education, which explain much of the gap between two people in the same occupation.

By occupation skill level

The FSO's table by groups of occupations sorts the ISCO major groups into four skill levels. Gross monthly wage, full-time, 2024 ESS:

The same page splits the major groups by sex. In 2024 the median was CHF 10,787 for male managers and CHF 9,088 for female managers; CHF 9,652 and CHF 8,492 for male and female professionals; CHF 7,964 and CHF 6,927 for technicians and associate professionals. Clerical support workers were the one group where women's median (CHF 6,400) was above men's (CHF 6,319). To find which group a job belongs to, the FSO points to the CH-ISCO-19 search on its interoperability platform.

By professional position and region

Education sets the baseline. In 2024 a full-time employee with a university of applied sciences degree had a median of CHF 9,288, and one with a federal VET certificate (EFZ) CHF 6,390. But position decides the rest: with an EFZ, a job with a high level of responsibility paid CHF 8,252 against CHF 6,162 without, and a university graduate in a job without responsibility earned CHF 8,645.

Two further findings from the press release are relevant if you are moving to Switzerland. In jobs without a management function, Swiss employees had a median of CHF 6,765, against CHF 5,421 for B-permit holders, CHF 6,034 for C-permit holders and CHF 5,950 for cross-border commuters. In jobs with a high level of responsibility the FSO found the reverse, with foreign employees earning more than Swiss employees. And the gender gap grows with seniority: 14.0% in high-responsibility jobs, 5.2% in jobs without a management function.

This is an illustrative example with made-up offer figures; the benchmarks are real 2024 ESS values. Lena is offered a software developer job at a company in the canton of Zurich: CHF 105,000 gross a year, paid in 13 instalments, on a 42-hour week, with no people to manage.

1. Put it on the FSO basis. The 13th instalment is already inside the annual figure, so divide by 12: CHF 105,000 ÷ 12 = CHF 8,750. Standardise to 40 hours: CHF 8,750 × 40 ÷ 42 = CHF 8,333.
2. National median: CHF 7,024. The offer is about 19% above it.
3. Regional median: Zurich, CHF 7,502. About 11% above.
4. Region by position: Zurich, responsible for execution of work, CHF 8,318; no management function, CHF 6,507. The offer matches the first and is well above the second.
5. Sector: information and communication, national median CHF 9,473, Q1 CHF 7,271, Q3 CHF 12,182. The offer sits in the second quartile, below the sector median.
6. Occupation: software developers belong to the professionals major group, skill level 4, with a median of CHF 9,331. The offer is about CHF 1,000 below it.

My reading: the offer is fine for the region and the level, and below the middle of both its sector and its occupation group. The step people skip is the hours: on a 40-hour week the same salary would be CHF 8,750, clearly above the Zurich benchmark at step 4 rather than level with it. If Lena has several years of experience, I would anchor a counter-offer on the sector median rather than the regional one, because that is the comparison the employer's competitors are paying against. The salary negotiation guide covers how to make that ask.

One limit: the FSO pages used here do not cross region with sector or occupation. The FSO's STAT-TAB database can build that table (in French and German) if you need a sharper benchmark.

Salary is part of the permit decision for non-EU nationals. SEM requires pay and employment terms to match local, professional and sectoral conditions, so the tables above are roughly what a canton looks at. The Swiss work permit guide explains the procedure and the 2026 quotas (4,500 B and 4,000 L permits for third-country workers), and applying for jobs in Switzerland as a foreigner covers the search itself.

• FSO: Swiss Earnings Structure Survey 2024, initial findings (English lead)
• FSO: Lohnstrukturerhebung 2024, full press release with methodology (German)
• FSO: Earnings structure (overview, P10/P90, survey cadence)
• FSO: Earnings structure by economic sections, 2024
• FSO: Earnings structure by major regions, 2024
• FSO: Earnings structure by groups of occupations, 2024
• SEM: Basis for admission to the Swiss employment market
• Federal Council: 2026 quotas for workers from third countries