13.3 percent of employees never use digital devices at work
Employed people who never use a computer, tablet or smartphone in their work were in the minority in 2022. While 13.0% of those in employment never perform intellectual tasks at work, 31.4% never perform manual tasks. A very small proportion of those in employment say that their professional activities are associated with a lot of routine or little autonomy. These two aspects are considered risk factors for automation.
The publication "Tasks, digital devices and automation risk in the workplace in 2022" examines the data from the European module "Occupational skills" of the Swiss Labor Force Survey (SLFS).
Widespread use of digital devices
More than a third of employees (35.6%) work with digital devices all the time. Only 13.3% never use such devices in the course of their work. Younger people use them more frequently on average than older people. The only exception is the 15 to 24 age group, which can be explained by the fact that some of them are still in apprenticeships or have learned a trade or service profession, while others are still in training and are pursuing part-time jobs in manual rather than intellectual fields.
Intellectual versus manual tasks
Half (49.8%) of those in employment state that they spend at least part of their working time on intellectual tasks such as reading technical documents or performing relatively complicated calculations. In contrast, 13.0% never perform such tasks. The most time is spent on intellectual tasks in the economic sectors "Financial intermediation", "Information and communication" and "Professional, scientific and technical services".
31.4% of those in employment never perform manual tasks in their job that require strength or dexterity. 15.4% spend all or most of their time on such tasks, 11.4% at least half of the time. According to their own statements, men perform such tasks more often than women and foreign nationals more often than Swiss nationals.
Autonomy and routine in professional activities
A small proportion of employees (4.9%) believe that their work is very routine. This proportion is 4.2% for men and 5.7% for women. It is lowest among people with tertiary education (2.3%).
9.2% of those in employment state that they have little autonomy in their professional activities. The corresponding figure for women is 10.2% and 8.3% for men. The higher the level of education, the lower the proportion of employees with little autonomy. For people with no post-compulsory education (lower secondary level) it is 18.1%, for people with an upper secondary level qualification it is 10.4% and for people with a tertiary education it is 4.9%.
Low automation risk compared to the rest of Europe
In Switzerland, 1.0% of the workforce has both a high proportion of routine tasks and little autonomy - both risk factors for automation. In a European comparison, Switzerland ranks together with Greece (1.0%) after Luxembourg (0.9%) and ahead of Denmark (1.2%), Sweden (1.3%) and Italy (1.3%) and is therefore among the countries with the smallest proportion of employees with a high risk of automation. The proportion is highest in Slovakia (11.4%), Slovenia (5.6%), Ireland, Romania and the Czech Republic (5.1% each).
Source: Federal Statistical Office
