Demographics

Locle 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...

 (13,143 or 90.0%) 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 (449 or 3.1%) and 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....

 is the third (309 or 2.1%). There are 8 people who speak Romansh.

, the population was 49.3% male and 50.7% female. The population was made up of 5,456 Swiss men (38.7% of the population) and 1,490 (10.6%) non-Swiss men. There were 5,875 Swiss women (41.7%) and 1,282 (9.1%) non-Swiss women.

Of the population in the district, 5,591 or about 38.3% were born in Locle and lived there in 2000. There were 3,149 or 21.6% who were born in the same canton, while 2,136 or 14.6% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 3,037 or 20.8% were born outside of Switzerland.

, there were 5,484 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 7,154 married individuals, 1,143 widows or widowers and 822 individuals who are divorced.

There were 2,228 households that consist of only one person and 397 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 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...

 which received 23.35% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP

Social Democratic Party of Switzerland

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

 (21.15%), the PdA Party (19.12%) and the LPS Party

Liberal Party of Switzerland

The Liberal Party of Switzerland was a party with economically liberal policies. It was known as a party of the upper class. On 1 January 2009 it merged with the larger Free Democratic Party to establish FDP.The Liberals....

 (17.32%). In the federal election, a total of 4,969 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 51.8%.

Religion

From the , 4,491 or 30.8% were Roman Catholic, while 5,275 or 36.1% 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 66 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 0.45% of the population), there were 32 individuals (or about 0.22% 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 1,096 individuals (or about 7.51% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 351 (or about 2.40% 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 32 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...

, 1 person who was 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 20 individuals who belonged to another church. 3,006 (or about 20.58% 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 772 individuals (or about 5.29% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Locle about 4,907 or (33.6%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 1,364 or (9.3%) 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 1,364 who completed tertiary schooling, 57.6% were Swiss men, 22.7% were Swiss women, 13.3% were non-Swiss men and 6.4% 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 15.5 kindergarten classes with a total of 277 students in District du Locle. In the same year, there were 45.5 primary classes with a total of 828 students.