In Switzerland as elsewhere, households in the middle of the social ladder are seeing their fixed costs rise faster than their incomes. The FSO has just put numbers on what many were already feeling.
The crisis is not affecting everyone in the same way. In Switzerland, as in many OECD countries, the middle class feels its room for manoeuvre narrowing, not because it is sliding en masse into poverty, but because it is being hit by a build-up of fixed expenses that is eating into budgets month after month. The explanation begins with a straightforward mechanism: middle incomes are rising more slowly than certain unavoidable costs. In its report Under Pressure: The Middle Class Squeeze (OECD, 2019), the organisation notes that the cost of essential goods and services, first and foremost housing, whose price has risen three times faster than median income over the past three decades, has increased more rapidly than labour income and overall inflation, reducing the savings capacity of middle-income households and, in some cases, even forcing them into debt. In other words, even when nominal wages rise, real purchasing power does not necessarily keep pace.
This strain is particularly visible when spending is non-discretionary. A purchase can be postponed, a trip can be cancelled, leisure can be deferred. Rent, health insurance or energy bills, by contrast, cannot be avoided for long. That is precisely what gives the crisis such intensity in middle-income households, which are more exposed than affluent households, yet less protected than low-income groups by targeted benefits.
The press release from the Federal Statistical Office, published on 8 May 2026 on the basis of the 2023 Household Budget Survey and the 2024 Survey on Income and Living Conditions, is illuminating in this regard. In Switzerland, 55.2% of the population belongs to the middle class, a share that has remained broadly stable over the past 25 years. But this statistical stability masks significant disparities within the group itself. In 2024, 10.5% of the lower middle class, or 240,000 people, faced housing costs representing more than 40% of their disposable income, compared with 3.5% in the upper middle class. That same year, 25.0% of people in the lower middle class lived in a household unable to cover an unexpected expense of CHF 2,500, compared with 10.9% in the upper segment. In addition, 14.1% of the lower middle class said it was difficult or very difficult to make ends meet at the end of the month, compared with 5.9% in the upper middle class. More than one in ten members of the lower middle class had not been able to go on holiday for financial reasons, compared with only 3.1% in the upper segment. These figures reveal the heart of the problem: the middle of the social ladder is not homogeneous, and its lower half is far more vulnerable than is often assumed.
In Geneva, the pressure is even more tangible. The middle class makes a significant contribution to tax revenues but receives little state support, notably for housing and health insurance. In 2025, the average premium across all categories reached CHF 477.50 per month in the canton, up 6.5% from 2024, leaving Geneva with the highest premiums in the country. For an adult, the monthly bill stood at CHF 572, up 6%; for children, the increase reached 7%. When such a large share of income is absorbed by healthcare alone before rent is even added, little is left for the rest: food, transport, savings, unforeseen expenses. It is therefore not a sudden drop in income that fuels the sense of crisis, but a gradual tightening of the budget and, with it, a widening gap between what macroeconomic statistics show and what households actually experience. Broad indicators may suggest an economy that is holding up, even proving resilient; but for those whose fixed expenses are rising faster than their incomes, the reality is quite different. The feeling of downgrading is built on very concrete facts: a lease renewed at a higher rent, another increase in health premiums, an unexpected expense that suddenly becomes hard to absorb. The OECD also notes that middle classes feel left behind by the benefits of globalisation and technological change, which aptly describes the unease of a group that still knows it is protected, while realising that its financial security is less solid than before.
The middle class feels the crisis more acutely because it is caught in a vise: too much income to qualify for many support mechanisms, not enough room to absorb a sustained rise in essential costs. The FSO and OECD data converge on this point: the issue is not just the level of prices, but the very structure of the expenses weighing on middle-income households. The crisis does not only hit those who fall. It also wears down those who are still managing to hold on, but only through constant trade-offs, sacrifices and anxiety.
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