Swiss hospitality minimum wages rise 0.6% in 2027
Cooks, waiters and hotel staff covered by Switzerland's national collective agreement get a raise that tracks the official inflation forecast to the decimal, while a new agreement is still being negotiated.
Swiss hospitality minimum wages will rise by 0.6% on 1 January 2027, the employer associations and unions behind the sector's national collective agreement announced on 28 September. The figure matches, to the decimal, the inflation the federal government expects for next year.
The increase applies to every wage category in the L-GAV, the collective labour agreement that covers restaurants, hotels and caterers across the country. An employee without vocational training will earn at least CHF 3,735 a month, up from CHF 3,713. Holders of the Progresso certificate move to CHF 3,967, staff with the two-year federal certificate (EBA) to CHF 4,094 and those with the three-year federal diploma (EFZ) to CHF 4,555.
In francs, the raise is modest: 22 more a month at the bottom of the scale, 27 for a cook or waiter with an EFZ diploma and 32 in the top category, where the minimum reaches CHF 5,325. For seasonal contracts the new rates apply from the start of the summer season on 1 May 2027.
The 2027 increase keeps the lowest hospitality salaries level with prices, and not a franc more.
How Swiss hospitality minimum wages are set
The number was not negotiated this autumn. In 2025 the six social partners, GastroSuisse, HotellerieSuisse and the Swiss Catering Association on the employer side and Hotel & Gastro Union, Syna and Unia for staff, agreed that minimum wages for 2026 and 2027 would simply follow the average annual inflation projected each September by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). The aim was to take pay off the table while they rewrite the agreement itself.
SECO's expert group published that forecast in mid-September: 0.6% inflation in both 2026 and 2027, with growth raised to 1.7% this year. Last year the same mechanism produced an even thinner rise, from CHF 3,706 to CHF 3,713 a month for unskilled staff.
The rest of the framework stays as it is: a 41-hour week as standard, 43.5 hours in seasonal businesses and 45 hours in small establishments, five weeks of paid holiday and six paid public holidays a year, according to GastroSuisse's trade paper GastroJournal.
A new collective agreement for 2028
The real bargaining is happening elsewhere. Talks on a new L-GAV, replacing the text in force since 2017, began in the last quarter of 2025. The partners aim to have the result approved by their governing bodies in early 2027 and, if possible, to apply it from 1 January 2028, in a sector that GastroSuisse says employs around 270,000 people.
Recruitment is the backdrop well beyond Switzerland, from 22,000 unfilled dining-room vacancies to new pay floors such as Australia's minimum wage for food delivery riders. In Switzerland, the 2027 increase keeps the lowest hospitality salaries level with prices, and not a franc more.
