Topics such as the acute shortage of personnel in retirement and nursing homes and the shortage of primary care physicians certainly give rise to concern. However, given that the predicted shortfalls in care have not materialised, we have also at the same time become accustomed to these stereotypes within healthcare policy vocabulary being indeed just that. The lack of consequences implicitly confirms that the equilibrium between the demand for health professionals and their availability will be somehow established. More recently, however, there has been increasing evidence to suggest that a major shortage of qualified health professionals will also exist in Switzerland in the medium to long-term. Reports from the Swiss Health Observatory published since the end of 2008 have confirmed this trend - namely the increasing demand due to demographic changes within the population. On various occasions during the development of these studies, we proposed undertaking a detailed analysis of the question of the ageing workforce within the healthcare sector. Evidence had suggested that personnel capacity requirements could be greater affected by retirements and those who drop out of the profession than by the increasing demand resulting from demographic changes. The present study confirms this hypothesis. At the same time, we are also being confronted with staggering figures that quite simply cannot be matched by the current capacity of the education system: conservative estimates suggest that between 120,000 and 190,000 professionals will need to be recruited by 2030. [Foreword] Version en français: http://www.obsan.admin.ch/bfs/obsan/fr/index/05/publikationsdatenbank.html?publicationID=3700 Version en allemand: http://www.obsan.admin.ch/bfs/obsan/de/index/05/publikationsdatenbank.html?publicationID=3699