Watchmaking Industry Looks Forward to Increase Its Workforce

The wristwatches as a symbol of the civilized world throughout the history had ups and downs. The 21st century is not an exception since some brands suffer a decrease in their sales while others are quite happy with their success. The watchmaking industry, though being rather unstable, still provides humanity with brilliant innovations. Some of the most incredible movements are created by the Swiss watchmaking industry. There is no secret that the wristwatches: Cartier replica watches produced by Swiss manufacturers are designed for quite wealthy people.

It seems that while companies, that produce wristwatches for teenagers and middle-class market segment, are suffering a decrease in their sales due to development of new technical devices that not only show the time but also provide some entertaining functions, the Swiss manufacturers enjoy their business expansion, providing their target audience with some new mechanical masterpieces.

In 2006 the Swiss watchmaking industry announced that it was going to increase during the next 4 years its workforce by not less than 18 per cent. Due to the constantly developing watchmaking business the companies that have much in common with the Swiss watch industry will provide additional work places. Thus, taking into consideration the industry survey, about two thousand additional workers will be required to meet a rise in demand. And so, new work places will be provided thanks to the economic upturn of the luxury watchmaking business.

The representative of the association of employers from the industry, Francois Matile, stated that there was a short supply of highly qualified specialists as well as technicians. That is why the industry of watchmaking will also hire a certain number of unskilled workers.

The association developed certain measures in order to meet the workforce target. It states that some special training programs will be developed for the employees. The workers will also be asked to keep their jobs even beyond their retirement age.

In addition to the upper mentioned, the association is willing to create special short-term training programs for young people and hire additional workforce from abroad. The largest watchmaking group, Swatch, announced that there was a significant increase in its sales. In the first half of the year Swiss reported to have a SFr330 million increase in net profit, which is about 278 million dollars.

The watchmaking group stated that it looked forward to having an increase in the second half of the year, but it also cautioned that the increase of its sales might slow down due to the weakening of today’s economy. The main competitor of the Swatch watchmaking group, a French firm LVMH, which deals with luxuries, also reported some positive results of its activity in the first half of the year. Its revenue increased up to twelve per cent.

The peak of the Swiss watchmaking industry was in 1970, when it included about 1500 companies with about 90,000 workers. Afterwards the industry suffered a crisis and about 15 per cent of all its workers remained jobless. The recent results show about 41,000 workers which are currently involved in the Swiss watchmaking industry: Cartier replica watches.