ZURICH, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Employment levels in Switzerland fell for the first time in nearly six years in the second quarter as the recession forced more manufacturers to axe jobs, data showed on Tuesday.
The number of non-farm payrolls fell by 0.4 percent on the year to 3.945 million, the Swiss Federal Statistics Office said.
Employment in the manufacturing sector was down 2.0 percent while the services sector still created jobs, with employment numbers rising 0.2 percent.
The overall drop was the first since the third quarter of 2003, a spokesman for the statistics office said.
Switzerland slipped into recession at the middle of last year but has weathered the crisis better than other industrialised countries. Still, the Swiss central bank sees the economy shrinking by up to 3 percent in 2009. The forward-looking indicators of the employment survey showed further job losses may be in the pipeline: the index for vacancies dropped 36 percent to 139, while the outlook index shed 6.6 percent to 1.00. (Reporting by Sven Egenter)