Statistics on Swiss Cities and Towns

The Statistics on Swiss Cities and Towns provide information on the population, work, employment, finances, mobility and education and training in towns and cities. Each edition – available as printed and interactive digital versions – is dedicated to a specific topic. The data used are from 162 statistical cities and eight other members of the Swiss Union of Cities regarded as urban by tradition or due to their development. These data are available in the catalogues and databases of the Swiss statistical portal and on the opendata.swiss platform.

Work in the cities and towns - 2023 edition

Published for the 8th time together with the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), the 84th edition this year is dedicated to the topic of "work and income", providing detailed data on the sectors of activity of cities and towns and on aspects that contribute to their attractiveness, such as the cultural economy or the accessibility of services.

Location quotients specific to the cities and towns

With a location quotient of 1.4 on average, financial services are the largest industry of the 170 cities and towns in the publication.
This area thus concentrates an employment share that is 1.4 times higher than at the Swiss level. While cities and towns with more than 100 000 inhabitants are known to have a concentration of employment mainly in the financial services (2.2) and knowledge-intensive industries (1.4), those with fewer than 10 000 inhabitants are characterised by tourism (5.2) and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries (2.8).

Accessibility to services, quality of cities and towns

One good quality of cities and towns is their ease of accessibility. This can be seen, for example, in the case of upper-secondary and tertiary level educational institutions. The average distance a secondary school pupil travels to school is just under 850 metres in the larger cities. In towns with 10 000 to 14 999 inhabitants, this increases to 2250 metres, while in those with fewer than 10 000 inhabitants, this even rises to almost 4000 metres.

Further information

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