IN-DEPTH: The industry’s chronic shortage of watchmakers
The watch industry has always had a problem with after-sales service. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it’s awful. It’s rarely brilliant. If you own an expensive watch and it needs a repair, it will be weeks and months before you can expect to get it back with a clean bill of health. And it costs the earth. A huge reason for this glaring issue is the chronic shortage of skilled watchmakers. And the problem is getting worse, not better. Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins spoke to a few in the know to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
The watch industry is full of inconsistencies or things that make little sense. For instance, if we accept that luxury is largely about scarcity, then why is it that Rolex produces so many watches but continues to be the most sought-after brand? Or why are people willing to pay multiple times more money for watches that tell the time a lot less accurately than a $10 Casio watch? And why do the French-speaking Swiss (the center of the horological universe) still go on holiday for a month in the summer each year? Answers to any or all of the above questions on a postcard please.
But arguably the most egregious inconsistency of them all is the time and costs associated with watch servicing. The investment, the attention to detail, and the passion of watch retailers and brands are world-leading. By contrast, the after-sales service is often an embarrassment. Why does it take so much longer to get your watch repaired than your car? Of course, there are technical differences in the methods and processes, but a large part of the problem is a lot more fundamental. There simply aren’t enough watchmakers to service the number of mechanical watches that are out there in the wild.
Since the quartz crisis of the 1970s, the number of qualified watchmakers in the USA has been on a steep decline. In 1953, there were approximately 44,000, according to the US Department of Labor and historical records from the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute (AWCI). By 2021, that number had plummeted to roughly 6,500, based on data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And this comes at the exact time that the States is enjoying a prolonged (and potentially permanent) time as the world’s largest export market for Swiss watches. The demand for high quality watchmakers has never been higher, but supply is lagging miles behind demand, hence the high prices and long wait times.
The problem is already causing concern among several key figures in the industry, but it’s arguably still not being taken seriously enough. It fundamentally affects the value proposition for the interested buyer, no matter how much Veuve Clicquot they’re served and how well they’re looked after during the initial act of purchasing. There’s no way this can’t affect demand on some level, and therefore top lines for businesses. If money doesn’t make people wake up and smell the coffee, nothing will.
“The shortage appears to be substantial,” says Nick Manousos, CEO of the Horological Society of New York (HSNY). “Many in the industry estimate that the United States could use several thousand more trained watchmakers than it currently has. The gap affects service centers, independent workshops, and retail networks, often resulting in long wait times for routine service.”
Alistair Audsley, the CEO of the Alliance of British Watch & Clockmakers (the de facto trade body for British watchmaking) agrees, and sees this as being a watershed moment. “We’re hearing of repair backlogs stretching into years at some facilities. If true, this represents a genuine threat to the long-term health of the mechanical watch market in America. If collectors cannot get their watches serviced reliably, confidence in the entire sector will surely begin to erode.”
Some figures provided by Jason Champion, education director at the aforementioned AWCI, illuminate just how desperate the situation has become. “Right now, we have a ratio of at least 10 to 1 of locations looking to hire a watchmaker versus watchmakers reaching out to us looking for employment.” Sustainable, this isn’t.
But it’s one thing to highlight a problem, and quite another to find an obvious solution. Not only have watchmaker numbers fallen off a cliff, but the age profile of a lot of the current workforce is also a cause for concern, as they are in the twilight of their careers. In other words, the problem could get a lot worse fairly soon if something is not done about it. Especially because it’s not just that the world is producing more new luxury watches than ever, but these sit atop an enormous pile of watches that are already in existence. Almost literally every luxury watch that’s ever been made is still in circulation, because people tend not to throw them away—”proliferation competition” as Audsley refers to it.
Boosting the profile of the job itself is a clear and obvious start, reckons Champion. “Watch service is rarely discussed at the sales counter and only becomes an issue when there is a problem,” he says. “More education on what the profession is could be made at the point of most interest, when someone is looking at timepieces.”
Audsley agrees. “You can’t recruit people to a career they don’t know exists. The US industry needs high-profile public-facing initiatives that showcase the craft and the opportunities.”
Manousos goes further and believes that several steps need to be taken to even begin to arrest the ever-growing gap between supply and demand. Firstly, he says, “Expand financial aid for watchmaking students. Scholarships and stipends ease the financial burden created by tuition, tools, and living costs.” He believes that this should also be extended to supporting continuing education for mid-career training. Secondly, “Strengthen watchmaking schools. Schools benefit from steady funding, modern equipment, and closer ties with employers. Multi-year support tends to be the most stabilising,” he says.
Next, he thinks that there should be a concerted effort to “Develop formal apprenticeships. Structured, paid apprenticeships remain limited in the US. Expanding them could help graduates transition more quickly into productive roles.” His last recommendation is perhaps the most interesting. “Improve compensation and career visibility. Salaries and career pathways have been improving, and continued progress can make the profession more attractive to new entrants.”
Usually, when demand far outstrips supply, basic free market forces should largely correct the problem. In this case, because demand is highly unlikely to go down any time soon, the only thing that the market can materially affect is supply. This should mean inflated remuneration to encourage more employees into the job market, thus correcting the initial market failure, over time. But, although qualified watchmaking is a decent career (a top level watchmaker can expect to earn six figures in the States, while those less qualified would expect a bit more than half of this), free market economics have certainly not done their job. At what point is it a false economy to not pay more, in order to encourage greater numbers into the profession? What value can you put on dissatisfied customers, who have spent a small fortune on your brand or at your store?
This is an issue that Jonathan Zadok of Zadok Jewelers in Texas knows only too well. “We’ve become quite involved in watch servicing,” he told me. “We forget that every year millions more Swiss watches are made with automatic movements, or even quartz movements for that matter. And those watches need to be serviced. It’s not like a t-shirt, where you wear it for a few years and then you’re done with it or give it to charity. Watches don’t get thrown away, so every year millions of them just get added to the tens or hundreds of millions that have already been made. And there are just not enough watchmakers to service them all, so we’ve been bringing some of that in-house so that we can just provide a better customer experience for our clients.”
Zadok is right, but he can’t cure the problem on his own. Although the UK has its own watchmaking shortage, Audsley highlights one of the steps that the Alliance of British Watch & Clockmakers has taken. “The industry needs to make the business case compelling,” he says. “In the UK, we’re focused on demonstrating that we offer a skilled, well-compensated profession with genuine job security.” He also points out that there is a cultural issue with the watch industry, which goes beyond the US and permeates the global network. “Some manufacturers’ restrictive parts policies actually make it harder for independent watchmakers to thrive, which discourages people from entering the profession outside of brand-specific training programmes. The industry needs to think carefully about whether these policies are ultimately self-defeating,” he warns.
The HSNY aims to mitigate against some of this risk by offering grants to independent watchmakers, but the point Audsley raises is significant nonetheless. The bully boy tactics (some legitimate and some dubious to say the least) by the bigger groups and brands, all in the name of guaranteeing higher standards for their customers, have left the servicing sector demoralised over a number of decades. It’s harder and more expensive than ever to be a certified service center for the major brands. This again comes back to the issue of some people seeing the career as barely worth it or even possible, financially.
An issue that doesn’t get discussed as much as some of the others is the nature of the type of individual that (generally) goes into the profession in the first place. If a lot of these people are insular, unassuming characters, then it’s perhaps less likely that they will discuss their career with friends or family, thus failing to enthuse those around them. “It is a niche field which requires keen observation, hand dexterity, ethics and patience. These are traits which are not exercised in our current culture,” Champion says. “Most watchmakers suffer from an introverted personality. This is combined with a busy workload and a personality that can be obsessive over details, which can lead to someone not being as forthcoming with their career compared to others.”
Which brings us neatly onto the issue of gender. When you think of a watchmaker, it’s invariably a man in a white lab coat, perhaps with a loupe in hand. I’d hazard a guess that no-one would picture a glamorous lady, and yet there’s very little logic to this. Brute strength is simply not a requirement, so why are more women not encouraged to join the scene? “In a recent trip overseas it was surprising and wonderful to see the percentage of female watchmakers to be as high as 80% of the workforce,” Champion says. “This is a different story here in the US. Ladies make excellent watchmakers and excel in many ways.”
If the gender imbalance issue can be argued to be more acute in the States than elsewhere, what about the problem more generally? To what extent is this a global shortage or largely a star spangled one? “The watchmaker shortage is absolutely universal,” Audsley asserts. “we’re seeing parallel concerns across all major watchmaking markets. Switzerland needs approximately 4,000 additional watchmakers by 2026, according to their industry employers’ convention. The Quartz Crisis of the 1970s decimated the profession globally. In Switzerland alone, watchmaking employment is said to have dropped by 60% during that decade. An entire generation simply didn’t enter the trade to replace those who have since been retiring en masse.
“Secondly, the broader education sector has devalued the perception of skilled hand working. We were conditioned to believe that white collar professions were the higher grade, but I can see a rapid re-evaluation of that situation as those jobs are decimated by AI in the coming years.”
The States is not alone then, but there’s a good argument for saying that it feels the pinch more than most, for a few different reasons. “The US has relatively few accredited watchmaking schools, and several have closed in recent decades,” Manousos points out. “Other regions have maintained a more robust network of programmes. And the size and distribution of the US makes it harder to cluster training, apprenticeships, and service networks in the way some European countries can.”
This second point is one that Audsley wholeheartedly agrees with. “The physical scale of the USA means the shortage creates genuine service ‘deserts’—in other words, large areas where there’s simply no qualified watchmaker within reasonable distance.”
At the heart of why this has become such a major concern, therein also lies the silver lining. The fact that demand is through the roof, through both the pre-owned market (where provenance and service history have never been more important) and the primary sector, suggests that the watch industry has never had it so good. With the dawn of the internet and social media, we are living in the information age, and this has been a godsend for watch brands. They obsess over their history, their authenticity, their creativity, and their horological credibility, and collectors and normal folk alike have never found it easier to access all this information to help them with their buying decision. The US in particular has benefitted, being the number one market (by a country mile) for Swiss watch exports since 2021.
So all is not doom and gloom. But the cloud to this silver lining can’t simply be wished away. Although it’s a ‘good’ problem to have such high demand for timepieces (and therefore for watch servicing), it is negatively impacting customer service in a major way, which is anathema to the magnificent watch brands and retailers that make up the ecosystem. It’s the elephant in the room, which lets the whole side down. The shopping experience at leading jewellers has never been more world class. Staff knowledge, store presentation, and brand selection are excellent. Waiting months for your watch to be repaired isn’t.
No-one is suggesting a quick fix, but if some or all of the practical steps laid out above are not taken more seriously by the industry at large, including the big groups, then the current choppy waters that are barely being navigated could soon turn into the whole ship capsizing in the squalls. A storm is coming, and an army of men and women armed with precision screwdrivers may be our only hope.
This article first appeared in the February 2026 edition of Watch Insider magazine.
