Counting the Lugano cluster: firms, jobs, value added and taxes

Industry estimates over fifteen years

Before the Federal Statistical Office published cantonal data, the size of the Lugano trading cluster was known only from estimates that the association, the city and the canton gave to the press. These estimates vary considerably and must be read with their date and context. In September 2014 Swiss Italian television reported that 80 companies and 1,500 highly qualified jobs characterized the Lugano trading centre.¹ A promotional brochure of 2016 spoke of about 70 companies and 1,000 persons employed directly or indirectly in the sector.² The sponsored GTR article of about the same time reported about a hundred trading firms in Lugano, an increase of 50 per cent in five years.³ In March 2018 Swiss Italian television mentioned more than a hundred companies with a combined turnover of CHF 26 billion.⁴ At the beginning of the war in February 2022 the Ticino press reported about a hundred firms with about 1,600 jobs and tax revenue of CHF 80 million a year, and in June 2022 the association's president gave 120 companies, 1,600 employees and CHF 70 million of tax revenue.⁵ The association's website speaks today of "un centinaio di aziende", about a hundred firms, in Lugano.⁶

Date Firms Jobs Source 2014 80 1,500 RSI c. 2016 70–100 1,000 Brochure, GTR 2018 over 100 n/a RSI Feb. 2022 about 100 1,600 Tio June 2022 120 1,600 RSI (LCTA) 2019 (official) 123 968 USTAT/BFS 2023 (official) 114 873 USTAT/BFS

Table 3. Estimates of the Lugano trading cluster compared with official statistics. Sources: see notes.

The estimates of firms are broadly consistent with the official count, which places the number of trading enterprises in Ticino between 114 and 123 in the years 2017 to 2023. The estimates of jobs exceed the official figures by more than half. The difference has a simple explanation. The official core statistics count only the employees of trading firms in Ticino, whereas the association's estimates include, explicitly or implicitly, the employees of banks, shipping firms, inspection companies, insurers, logistics firms, auditors and fiduciaries who work for the traders. The brochure of 2016 said so expressly when it spoke of persons employed "directly or indirectly".

The official series

The official series since 2017 shows a stable but slightly shrinking Ticino cluster within a growing national industry. In 2017 Ticino counted 116 trading firms, 13.5 per cent of the Swiss total, with 899 employees, 9.3 per cent of the national core trading employment. In 2021 it counted 117 firms, 12.1 per cent of the total, with 901 employees, 8.7 per cent.⁷ The cantonal yearbook gives 123 enterprises with 968 employees in 2019, 114 enterprises with 882 employees in 2022 and 114 enterprises with 873 employees, equal to 812.8 full-time equivalents, in 2023. In 2023 the national totals were 975 enterprises with 10,735 employees, so that Ticino accounted for 11.7 per cent of the enterprises and 8.1 per cent of the employees.⁸ The Federal Council's implementation report of April 2021 gave Ticino's share of core employment as 9.5 per cent, against 44 per cent for Geneva and 21.4 per cent for Zug.⁹ Over the same period Zug grew from 183 to 240 firms and from 1,935 to 2,316 employees between 2017 and 2021, and Geneva from 4,346 to 4,471 employees.¹⁰

Two features of the Ticino figures deserve comment. The average Ticino trading firm is small: 873 employees in 114 enterprises make an average of under eight employees per firm, compared with about eleven nationally and about fifteen in Geneva in 2023. The decline in the number of firms after 2019 also coincides with the pandemic and the war. It suggests that the cluster has not yet replaced the firms that left or were liquidated after 2022. The cluster of support activities in Ticino is very small in the official statistics. In 2022 the Federal Statistical Office counted only 52 employees in support activities in Ticino, among them 28 in transport and logistics, 12 in financing and 6 in shipbroking, against 1,019 in Geneva out of a national total of 1,644.¹¹ This figure counts only firms that the statistics classify as dedicated to commodity trading support. The bank employees who finance Lugano traders from Geneva or Zurich, or who work in general trade finance departments of Ticino banks, do not appear in it.

Notes

1. RSI, "Lugano non è solo finanza", 16 September 2014 (above) ("80 aziende e 1'500 posti di lavoro altamente qualificati caratterizzano la piazza luganese"). ↩
2. Lugano Tourism / Switzerland Tourism, "Lugano for business, research & technology" (2016), https://meetings.myswitzerland.com/-/media/st/documents/meetings/media%20folder%20asia %20trophy/2016/lugano/lugano%20for%20business%20research%20%20technology.pdf ("Approximately 70 companies make up commodity trading in Lugano"; "1,000 highly qualified people are directly or indirectly employed in this sector"). ↩
3. GTR, "Success story, focus on Switzerland" (above). ↩
4. RSI, "L'acciaio che pesa in Ticino", 10 March 2018 (above). ↩
5. Tio.ch, 25 February 2022 (above); RSI, 24 June 2022 (above). ↩
6. LCTA, "Lugano e il commodity trading" (above). ↩
7. BFS, Statistik der Rohstoffhändler (NMP) (above). ↩
8. USTAT, 12 Denaro e banche (March 2026, above), T. 12.6. The shares are calculated from the table. ↩
9. SECO, Stand der Umsetzung der Empfehlungen (21 April 2021, above) ("Genf (44%), Zug (21,4%) und Tessin (9,5%)"). ↩
10. BFS, Statistik der Rohstoffhändler (NMP) (above). ↩
11. BFS, Statistik der Rohstoffhändler (NMP) (above), cluster 2022; USTAT, 12 Denaro e banche (March 2026, above), T. 12.6 (support activities in Ticino 2023: 52 employees, 46.0 FTE). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.