SECO compiles the quarterly national accounts (NA) for Switzerland; the Federal Statistical Office handles the annual national accounts. SECO publishes a flash estimate of GDP growth approximately 45 days after the end of each quarter, with detailed results by the output, expenditure and income approach following around 60 days later. SECO's fourth-quarter release also includes the initial figures for the annual national accounts.
SECO compiles Switzerland's quarterly national accounts using temporal disaggregation ('indirect approach') in line with international standards, drawing on a broad range of monthly and quarterly economic indicators. Consistency with the annual national accounts data is ensured throughout.
Major international sporting events create a predictable cycle in Swiss GDP data, with a significant boost to GDP in even-numbered calendar years. SECO therefore publishes additional data series adjusted for sporting events, as well as series adjusted for sporting events, seasonal and calendar effects, allowing underlying economic trends to be assessed more clearly.
Switzerland's quarterly national accounts are compiled using various routines in the R statistical software package. The core routines include the tempdisagg package for temporal disaggregation of time series, and the seasonal package, which provides an interface to X-13ARIMA-SEATS.
Revisions to national accounts data generally reflect updates or revisions to the underlying source data. More substantial revisions may occur when international methodology standards are updated. Switzerland's revision policy for the national accounts follows international guidelines. SECO publishes a real-time dataset, i.e. a historical record of each data release, making it easy to track how figures have changed over time.
SECO has formally committed to the highest standards of statistical quality through its accession to the Charter of Swiss Official Statistics. The quarterly national accounts have undergone several independent evaluations in recent years.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the central measure for determining a country's economic size and development, serving as the basis for economic and financial policy decisions. It measures the economic performance of a country or economic area over a specific period, typically a quarter or a year. GDP records the monetary value of goods and services produced, less the inputs used to produce them. As the calculation is standardised internationally, it enables comparisons between countries or regions and over time.
The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) calculates Switzerland's annual GDP, publishing the previous year's results around the end of August.
The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) calculates Switzerland's quarterly GDP. They release an early flash estimate of real GDP growth adjusted for sporting events ('GDP flash') around 45 days after each quarter ends. The detailed results covering output, expenditure and income follow about 60 days after the end of the quarter. Additionally, SECO publishes provisional results for the entire previous year's GDP at the end of February, based on these quarterly figures.
There are three ways of calculating GDP, all of which should yield the same result:
The output approach indicates how value added is created across different economic sectors. GDP is calculated as the sum of value added from all individual sectors.
The expenditure approach measures GDP as the sum of all spending on final products and services: GDP = consumption + gross investment + exports – imports. Imports are deducted since they are produced abroad.
The income approach demonstrates how GDP is distributed across various income streams, including employee compensation and property income.
Switzerland calculates its quarterly GDP using the output approach, where GDP is the sum of all value added across individual sectors. Any discrepancies between GDP and the sum of its components are recorded as ‘changes in inventories including statistical deviation’ on the expenditure side and as ‘net operating surplus’ on the income side.
Many economic indicators show regular fluctuations throughout the year. For example, retail sales peak before Christmas and decline afterwards, while construction activity is typically higher in summer than in winter.
Calendar and seasonal adjustment is a statistical method that removes seasonal patterns and calendar-related fluctuations (such as variations in working days) from economic data. This provides a clearer view of underlying economic trends and enables easier comparisons between different time periods.
When analysing the economy, GDP figures adjusted for seasonal and calendar effects are typically used. For the Swiss economy specifically, it is recommended to use GDP data that is adjusted for both seasonal/calendar effects and sporting events.
Yes, Switzerland calculates its GDP according to international standards. Since 1997, Switzerland's national accounts have been based on the European System of National Accounts, which is compatible with the UN's System of National Accounts. Following the Agreement on statistical cooperation between the Swiss Confederation and the European Community (now the EU), which came into force on 1 January 2007, Switzerland's GDP figures are also submitted to the European statistical office Eurostat.
SECO additionally publishes GDP data ‘adjusted for sporting events’ which is easier to interpret in economic terms since the impact of major international sporting events on Switzerland's GDP is filtered out.
Numerous important international sports federations are based in Switzerland. According to international standards, the value added they generate counts towards Switzerland's GDP.
Major international sporting events (e.g. the Olympic Games) typically take place in even calendar years. This creates a predictable pattern in Switzerland's GDP data: in even-numbered years, sporting events increase GDP, while in odd-numbered years, GDP growth is weaker. Similar to the effect of leap years, this regular, year-spanning cycle provides only limited insight into Switzerland's current economic situation.
To facilitate economic analysis, since 2018 SECO has been calculating additional GDP data that excludes the effects of major international sporting events.
GDP fluctuates with the number of working days in a year. Based on data from 1980 through 2021, regression analysis shows that an additional working day increases real GDP by approximately 0.04% in a given year. This estimate reflects the effect of leap years and existing public holidays falling on different weekdays, rather than any permanent changes to working days or annual working hours.
Revisions to GDP and its components are primarily due to the underlying source data being revised or updated. Revisions also occur when new data sources are incorporated into the calculations or when methodological changes are introduced. Wide-ranging revisions are possible in particular when new international standards for the calculations are implemented. The revision policy for Switzerland's national accounts sets out how and when revisions to previously published data are made.
Revisions to the quarterly national accounts data take place every quarter. SECO then updates the data for those quarters for which annual data from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) was not yet available at the time of calculation. For example, in November 2023 the data for the first and second quarters of 2023 were revised. In addition, the seasonal and calendar adjustment of the data from 1995 onwards is updated every quarter.
With the data publication in early September, SECO incorporates the newly available annual FSO data. For example, in September 2024 newly calculated or updated annual data for 2021 to 2023 were integrated, which affects the quarterly data for that period. On the occasion of these so-called “annual revisions”, SECO also reviews its calculation models.
More extensive revisions to the annual and quarterly national accounts typically take place twice per decade. New international standards or new methods are then introduced. These typically result in data revisions across the entire time series.
SECO publishes an analysis of the previous year's data revisions every year. In addition, it makes real-time ‘vintages’ available to data users, i.e. a dataset containing the time series as they were published at various points in time. Data revisions can thus be easily tracked.
GDP and per capita GDP are not a comprehensive measure of population well-being. GDP was designed to measure economic performance and cannot address questions about the distribution of wealth within a country, questions of equity or sustainability, and much more (see Indergand R., Kemeny F. (2021): Was kann das BIP – was nicht?, available in German only).
Other indicators measure various aspects of well-being and social progress, such as:
