In recent years, the birth rate in Switzerland has gradually fell back to achieving a weakness record in 2024, or 1.28 children per woman. This rate, which measures the number of living births reported to the total population, here reflects a company which no longer ensures its natural renewal (the replacement threshold being set at 2.1).
It is good to remember that Switzerland needs a qualified foreign workforce to run a good part of its economy.
Despite this decline, the total population of Switzerland increased, from some 7.2 million to December 31, 2000, to more than 9 million in 2024. This positive dynamic therefore does not result from births, but immigration. Without this migratory flow, the population would decrease inexorably, accentuating the overthrow already in the process of its age pyramid: fewer children, fewer assets, more retirees, a marked demographic imbalance and an increasing weight of the elderly in society.
In short, Swiss population growth is no longer natural today, but fueled by those who choose to come. Moreover, this is what all the countries of the globe will tend: a demographic summit around 2050, a stagnation then a progressive decrease or even a demographic implosion for certain states which have too strictly restricted their immigration.
For various reasons, the decline in the birth rate is correlated in terms of the development of a company. Once a certain level has been reached, the number of births drops systematically. It should also be noted that demographic engineering does not work in terms of public policies. Both the abolition of the only child’s policy in China and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers in Hungary have had no effect. It therefore seems vain to seek to reverse the situation. It is more relevant to seek to rethink your societal model with a different demography: fewer people, fewer workers, many elderly people and the consequences that this implies.
In the immediate future, it is necessary in Switzerland to consider the sword of Damocles of an initiative which arbitrarily fixes a maximum limit of 10 million inhabitants, which would amount to braking or even blocking immigration, the only engine of population growth. However, the conditions of immigration in Switzerland are already relatively strict, especially for nationals outside the European Union.
And it is good to remember that Switzerland needs a qualified foreign workforce to run a good part of its economy. Such a measure would accentuate labor shortages in care, construction, hotels or high technologies, sectors that are massively dependent. In the medium term, this initiative would weigh on economic prosperity, innovation, pension funding and the vitality of our regions.
Without eluding objective issues linked to immigration and demographic growth that Switzerland will experience in the coming years, Swiss salvation is taking shape as being: continuing to ensure controlled immigration on the existing model to take advantage of a quality foreign workforce and necessary for our quality of life while ensuring appropriate integration of this new population.
