The composition of Swiss growth in 2026: domestic demand carries the year while goods exports contract.
On 18 June the Federal Expert Group on Business Cycles put Swiss growth at 0.9% for 2026. The more useful figures sit in the same table: domestic demand is now expected to carry the year, foreign trade to subtract from it, and the order to reverse in 2027.
On 18 June 2026 the Federal Expert Group on Business Cycles lowered its forecast for Swiss GDP growth from 1.0% to 0.9% for 2026 — a rate it calls well below the historical average — and from 1.7% to 1.6% for 2027. KOF at ETH Zürich, publishing the day before, moved from 1.0% to 0.8% and from 1.7% to 1.5%. Both cited higher energy prices and a weaker international environment.
A tenth of a percentage point is not information a company can act on. The same tables contain a change that is.
The revision moved the sources of growth far more than its level
In March the Expert Group expected foreign trade to add 0.4 percentage points to Swiss growth in 2026; in June it expected foreign trade to subtract 0.2 — a swing of 0.6 points in one engine, against a headline revision of 0.1. Final domestic demand was trimmed from 1.2 points to 0.9.
Behind the swing sit goods exports: forecast at +1.0% in March, −0.7% in June, after +3.6% in 2025. Services exports moved the other way, revised up to +1.8%; equipment and software investment was cut to +0.3% from +0.7%.
For 2027 the arrangement reverses: foreign trade is forecast to contribute 0.5 points, goods exports to grow 3.5% and equipment investment 2.0%.
The forecast describes an economy running on one engine this year and on the other next year. Every company sits on one side of that division; the national average sits on neither.
Two components decide the national export figure, and neither behaves like the rest of industry
SECO’s first-quarter national accounts, published on 1 June, show why the export aggregate is a poor proxy for any single exporter. GDP adjusted for sporting events grew 0.4%, after 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025; industrial value added rose 1.3% after several subdued quarters and manufacturing 1.5%. Goods exports nevertheless fell 2.2%, and manufacturing value added remained 3.0% below its year-earlier level.
A footnote reconciles them: excluding transit trade and chemical and pharmaceutical products, goods exports rose 2.9%, while value added in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry fell 3.4%, its exports having declined sharply at the start of the year.
Neither excluded component behaves like ordinary industrial trade. The Federal Office for Customs and Border Security recorded record goods exports of CHF 287.0 billion in 2025, of which chemical and pharmaceutical products accounted for CHF 152 billion, or 53%; exports of machinery, electronics and appliances fell 0.6% that year, a third consecutive annual decline, and watches 1.7%. Transit trade — merchanting, where goods are bought and resold abroad without crossing the Swiss border — enters goods exports as a trading margin, not as production. Together they can move the national figure against the order books it is taken to describe.
A single strong quarter is therefore not a recovery; equally, the export line is not a forecast of any company’s own market.
Domestic demand is being asked to carry the year on modest margins
The engine expected to carry 2026 began the year quietly. In the first quarter domestic final demand grew 0.1%, private consumption was flat, retail value added fell 1.3%, and equipment and construction investment each fell 0.2%. Government consumption, at 0.9%, was the exception.
The forecast assumes improvement rather than continuation: private consumption at 1.2% against 1.4% in March, construction investment at 1.4%. The supporting margin is thin. Consumer prices are now expected to rise 0.6% in both 2026 and 2027, against 0.4% and 0.5% in March, after the Expert Group raised its Brent assumption for 2026 to USD 93.5 a barrel from USD 73.7. On 18 June the Swiss National Bank held its policy rate at 0%, with conditional inflation at 0.6% in 2026 and 2027 and 0.7% in 2028.
Wages complete the arithmetic. KOF’s wage survey, run in July and published on 17 August, drew some 3,500 responses: firms plan nominal increases averaging 1.2% over the next twelve months. They expect inflation of 1.1%; KOF forecasts 0.5%, which would leave real wage growth near 0.7%, against 0.2% a year on the Swiss wage index between 2014 and 2023 — respectable by historical standards, in KOF’s words. Construction plans 2.0% and hospitality 1.4%; retail, wholesale, manufacturing and finance cluster between 0.8% and 1.0%, and chemicals and pharmaceuticals cut planned rises from 1.5% to 1.0%.
Hiring intentions have already divided along the same line
The KOF Economic Barometer rose 1.4 points in July to 103.5, from a revised 102.1 in June, and remains above its medium-term average. The business tendency surveys for the same month, based on some 4,500 responses, report improvement in almost all sectors, most pronounced in wholesale trade, manufacturing and financial services; hospitality is the exception, with business worsening in both accommodation and food services.
Employment plans have not followed. The KOF Employment Indicator for the third quarter rose to 2.1 points from a revised 1.6, but manufacturing stayed negative at −5.3 for a fourth consecutive quarter, while construction stood at 11.2 and retail turned positive at 2.9 for the first time since the second quarter of 2024, and hospitality fell to −8.8, its lowest since the second quarter of 2021.
The official series describe a labour market loosening slowly rather than deteriorating. SECO counted 139,276 registered unemployed in July, 7.8% more than a year earlier: a rate of 3.0%, or 3.1% seasonally adjusted. The Expert Group expects an annual average of 3.1% in 2026 and 3.0% in 2027, after 2.8% in 2025.
The 2027 reversal is, in substance, a forecast about European demand
The recovery written into 2027 is not a Swiss variable. The Expert Group assumes euro-area GDP growth of 0.6% in 2026 rising to 1.3% in 2027, with Germany on the same path, and global demand growing 1.2% this year against 1.5% assumed in March; it expects European countries, Germany in particular, to emerge from their weakness and support the Swiss economy.
The first evidence arrived in August. Eurostat’s flash estimate of 14 August put euro-area GDP up 0.4% in the second quarter, after 0.0% in the first, and up 1.0% year on year; the EU grew 0.5%. Germany, France and Italy each grew 0.2% and Spain 0.7% — the three largest continental economies at half the pace of the bloc.
The decisions available now concern sequencing, not the growth rate
Little of this is within a company’s control. Five things are.
- Split your own revenue the way the forecast splits the economy. Domestic Switzerland on one line, exports on another; within exports, separate pharmaceutical-adjacent and merchanting-like revenue from cyclical industrial demand. The figure that matters is the one attached to your larger line.
- Sequence capacity to your own year. A domestically oriented business is in the stronger of the two forecast years now; an export-led supplier is in the weaker one, with recovery placed in 2027. Recruitment and working capital should follow that order, not the headline.
- Rebuild margin arithmetic on the published assumptions, not on last year’s. Brent at USD 93.5 for 2026, consumer prices at 0.6%, planned nominal wage increases near 1.2% and 2.0% in construction.
- Treat financing costs as flat rather than falling. The forecast assumes SARON at 0.0% in 2026 and 0.2% in 2027, and ten-year Confederation bonds at 0.5% then 0.6%. Nothing in it depends on further easing.
- Keep the currency an open variable. The National Bank said on 18 June that it has, if necessary, an increased willingness to intervene in the foreign exchange market against a rapid and excessive appreciation of the franc — a readiness, not a level.
Three dates will test the forecast. On 3 September SECO releases second-quarter national accounts, the first hard reading on whether domestic demand recovered from its flat start; the Expert Group publishes its next forecast on 17 September, and another on 16 December. September carries extra weight: the June forecast, finalised on 8 June, assumed US import tariffs would stay broadly at their then-current levels, and noted that the 10% duties under Section 122 of the US Trade Act could be held for at most 150 days without congressional approval — a window that expired on 24 July 2026.
One caution applies throughout: SECO’s first estimate of first-quarter growth, +0.5%, became +0.4% once fuller data arrived. Single readings move. What has held across two forecast rounds is the division of the year into a domestic half and an export half — the part a company can plan against.