In Switzerland, as elsewhere, middle-income households are seeing their fixed costs rise faster than their incomes. The Federal Statistical Office has just put numbers on what many already felt.
The crisis does not affect everyone in the same way. In Switzerland, as in many OECD countries, the middle classes feel their room for manoeuvre shrinking — not because they are sliding en masse into poverty, but because they are facing an accumulation of fixed costs that is steadily eating into their budgets month after month. The explanation first lies in a simple mechanism: middle incomes are rising more slowly than certain unavoidable costs. In its report Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class (OECD, 2019), the organisation notes that the cost of essential goods and services — chief among them housing, which has risen in price three times faster than median income over the past three decades — has increased more rapidly than earned income and overall inflation, reducing the saving 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 tension becomes especially visible when spending is not discretionary. One can postpone a purchase, give up a trip, delay leisure spending. One cannot, however, avoid rent, health insurance or energy bills for long. That is precisely what gives this crisis its particular force among middle-income households, which are more exposed than the wealthy, yet less protected than low-income households 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 Income and Living Conditions Survey, is revealing in this respect. 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 that statistical stability masks significant differences within the group itself. In 2024, 10.5% of the lower middle class — some 240,000 people — were facing housing costs representing more than 40% of their disposable income, compared with 3.5% in the upper middle class. In the same year, 25.0% of people in the lower middle class lived in a household unable to cope with 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, versus 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 core of the problem: the middle of the social ladder is not homogeneous, and its lower end 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 benefits from very little state support, particularly when it comes to housing and health insurance. In 2025, the average premium across all age categories reached CHF 477.50 per month in the canton, up 6.5% from 2024, with Geneva thus retaining its status as the canton with the highest premiums in the country. For an adult, the monthly bill came to CHF 572, an increase of 6%; for children, the rise reached 7%. When such a large share of income is absorbed by healthcare alone — before even adding rent — little remains for the rest: food, transport, savings and unforeseen expenses. The sense of crisis is therefore not driven by a sudden drop in income, but by the progressive tightening of household budgets 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 costs are rising faster than their incomes, the reality is very different. The feeling of social downgrading is built on concrete facts: a lease renewed at a higher price, another increase in health premiums, an unexpected expense that suddenly becomes hard to absorb. The OECD also points out that middle classes feel left behind by the gains from globalisation and technological change, which captures fairly well the unease of a group that knows it remains protected, while also realising that its financial security is less solid than before.
The middle class feels the crisis more acutely because it is caught in a squeeze: too much income to qualify for many support mechanisms, not enough room to absorb a sustained rise in essential costs. The data from the FSO and the OECD converge on this point: the issue is not only the level of prices, but the very structure of the expenses borne by middle-income households. The crisis does not only hit those who fall. It also wears down those who are still standing — but at the cost of constant trade-offs, sacrifices and anxiety.
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