The objective of this article is to analyse the trends in on-farm labour use, including own family labour, hired labour and contract work, and to assess the factors driving their evolution in France and in Switzerland during 1990-2007. A particular attention is given to agricultural policies, namely the level and type of support. Results indicate that crop area payments discourage the different labour demands in both countries, while environment and investment payments favour contract and hired labour in France. Contract labour and family labour are substitute and hired labour and family labour are complement in France.