Demographics

La Chaux-de-Fonds district has a population of .

Most of the population speaks French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (32,804 or 85.8%) as their first language, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 is the second most common (1,344 or 3.5%) and Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 is the third (1,175 or 3.1%). There are 945 people who speak German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and 32 people who speak Romansh.

, the population was 48.1% male and 51.9% female. The population was made up of 12,983 Swiss men (33.5% of the population) and 5,616 (14.5%) non-Swiss men. There were 15,077 Swiss women (39.0%) and 5,025 (13.0%) non-Swiss women.

Of the population in the district, 15,595 or about 40.8% were born in La Chaux-de-Fonds and lived there in 2000. There were 4,229 or 11.1% who were born in the same canton, while 7,172 or 18.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 9,747 or 25.5% were born outside of Switzerland.

, there were 14,871 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 17,843 married individuals, 2,700 widows or widowers and 2,824 individuals who are divorced.

There were 7,211 households that consist of only one person and 786 households with five or more people.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election

Swiss federal election, 2007

Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the SP

Social Democratic Party of Switzerland

The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 which received 27.76% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP

Swiss People's Party

The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...

 (25.93%), the PdA Party (13.98%) and the Green Party

Green Party of Switzerland

The Green Party of Switzerland is the fifth-largest party in the National Council of Switzerland, and the largest party that is not represented on the Federal Council.-History:...

 (11.92%). In the federal election, a total of 10,791 votes were cast, and the voter turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 47.3%.

Religion

From the , 11,545 or 30.2% were Roman Catholic, while 10,955 or 28.6% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church

Swiss Reformed Church

The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 207 members of an Orthodox church

Orthodox Christianity

The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

 (or about 0.54% of the population), there were 302 individuals (or about 0.79% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church

Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland

The Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland is the Swiss member church of the Union of Utrecht, also known as Old Catholic Church, originally founded by the jansenists, with a later influx of discontented Catholics following their disappointment with the First Vatican Council. It has 14,000...

, and there were 2,418 individuals (or about 6.32% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 132 individuals (or about 0.35% of the population) who were Jewish

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, and 1,372 (or about 3.59% of the population) who were Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic. There were 91 individuals who were Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

, 83 individuals who were Hindu

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

 and 47 individuals who belonged to another church. 10,265 (or about 26.85% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 2,014 individuals (or about 5.27% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In La Chaux-de-Fonds about 12,764 or (33.4%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 4,056 or (10.6%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule

Fachhochschule

A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 4,056 who completed tertiary schooling, 52.0% were Swiss men, 28.5% were Swiss women, 11.8% were non-Swiss men and 7.7% were non-Swiss women.

In the canton of Neuchâtel most municipalities provide two years of non-mandatory kindergarten

Kindergarten

A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

, followed by five years of mandatory primary education. The next four years of mandatory secondary education is provided at thirteen larger secondary schools, which many students travel out of their home municipality to attend. During the 2010-11 school year, there were 40 kindergarten classes with a total of 762 students in District de la Chaux-de-Fonds. In the same year, there were 116 primary classes with a total of 2,102 students.