Walterswil is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in the district of

Olten Olten (; High Alemannic: ''Oute'') is a town in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland and capital of the district of the same name. Olten grew into a town during the Middle Ages at the location of a bridge over the Aare. After a period of de ...

in the canton of

Solothurn Solothurn ( ; ; ; ; ) is a town, a municipality, and the capital of the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. It is located in the north-west of Switzerland on the banks of the Aare and on the foot of the Weissenstein Jura mountains. The town is ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

Geography

Walterswil has an area, , of . Of this area, or 53.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 36.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 10.7% is settled (buildings or roads) and or 0.4% is unproductive land.Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010 Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 4.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.7%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.3% of the area out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 31.7% is used for growing crops and 19.2% is pastures, while 2.5% is used for orchards or vine crops.

Coat of arms

The

blazon In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct an accurate image. The verb ''to blazon'' means to create such a description. The visual d ...

of the municipal

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

is ''Per fess Gules and Argent a Bend counterchanged and in the second a Juniper Branch proper.''

Demographics

Walterswil has a population () of . , 5.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals.Swiss Federal Statistical Office – Superweb database – Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008
accessed 19 June 2010 Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of -0.4%.
accessed 7 April 2011 Most of the population () speaks

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

(621 or 98.3%), with French being second most common (2 or 0.3%) and English being third (2 or 0.3%). , the gender distribution of the population was 51.9% male and 48.1% female. The population was made up of 338 Swiss men (48.1% of the population) and 27 (3.8%) non-Swiss men. There were 320 Swiss women (45.5%) and 18 (2.6%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 192 or about 30.4% were born in Walterswil and lived there in 2000. There were 67 or 10.6% who were born in the same canton, while 336 or 53.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 30 or 4.7% were born outside of Switzerland. In there were 3 live births to Swiss citizens and there were 4 deaths of Swiss citizens. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 1 while the foreign population remained the same. There was 1 Swiss man who immigrated back to Switzerland. At the same time, there were 2 non-Swiss men and 2 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was a decrease of 12 and the non-Swiss population remained the same. This represents a

population growth rate Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.2 billion in 2025. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 70 million annu ...

of -1.7%. The age distribution, , in Walterswil is; 54 children or 8.5% of the population are between 0 and 6 years old and 106 teenagers or 16.8% are between 7 and 19. Of the adult population, 29 people or 4.6% of the population are between 20 and 24 years old. 192 people or 30.4% are between 25 and 44, and 151 people or 23.9% are between 45 and 64. The senior population distribution is 79 people or 12.5% of the population are between 65 and 79 years old and there are 21 people or 3.3% who are over 80. , there were 268 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 317 married individuals, 26 widows or widowers and 21 individuals who are divorced.STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 – 2000
accessed 2 February 2011 , there were 265 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.4 persons per household. There were 80 households that consist of only one person and 21 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 267 households that answered this question, 30.0% were households made up of just one person and there were 5 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 79 married couples without children, 84 married couples with children There were 15 single parents with a child or children. There were 2 households that were made up of unrelated people and 2 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing. there were 149 single family homes (or 68.7% of the total) out of a total of 217 inhabited buildings. There were 24 multi-family buildings (11.1%), along with 40 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (18.4%) and 4 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (1.8%). Of the single family homes 18 were built before 1919, while 18 were built between 1990 and 2000. The greatest number of single family homes (35) were built between 1981 and 1990.Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB – Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 – Gebäude und Wohnungen
accessed 28 January 2011 there were 281 apartments in the municipality. The most common apartment size was 5 rooms of which there were 82. There were 2 single room apartments and 133 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 247 apartments (87.9% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 18 apartments (6.4%) were seasonally occupied and 16 apartments (5.7%) were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 2.9 new units per 1000 residents. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 1.37%. The historical population is given in the following chart: Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9) id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8) ImageSize = width:960 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:670 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:100 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:20 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center bar:1850 from:start till:448 text:"448" bar:1860 from:start till:426 text:"426" bar:1870 from:start till:444 text:"444" bar:1880 from:start till:426 text:"426" bar:1888 from:start till:441 text:"441" bar:1900 from:start till:430 text:"430" bar:1910 from:start till:521 text:"521" bar:1920 from:start till:578 text:"578" bar:1930 from:start till:539 text:"539" bar:1941 from:start till:522 text:"522" bar:1950 from:start till:548 text:"548" bar:1960 from:start till:567 text:"567" bar:1970 from:start till:601 text:"601" bar:1980 from:start till:547 text:"547" bar:1990 from:start till:665 text:"665" bar:2000 from:start till:632 text:"632"

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 36.98% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (27.1%), the FDP (15.24%) and the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...

(8.55%). In the federal election, a total of 229 votes were cast, and the

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...

was 41.4%.

Economy

, Walterswil had an unemployment rate of 3.4%. , there were 36 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 16 businesses involved in this sector. 11 people were employed in the

secondary sector In macroeconomics, the secondary sector of the economy is an economic sector in the three-sector theory that describes the role of manufacturing. It encompasses industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in constructi ...

and there were 5 businesses in this sector. 58 people were employed in the

tertiary sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the ...

, with 12 businesses in this sector. There were 335 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 41.8% of the workforce. the total number of

full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit of measurement that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often use ...

jobs was 82. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 22, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 9 of which 1 was in manufacturing and 8 (88.9%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 51. In the tertiary sector; 38 or 74.5% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 10 or 19.6% were in a hotel or restaurant, 2 or 3.9% were technical professionals or scientists, .Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB Betriebszählung: Arbeitsstätten nach Gemeinde und NOGA 2008 (Abschnitte), Sektoren 1-3
accessed 28 January 2011 , there were 21 workers who commuted into the municipality and 269 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 12.8 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering.Swiss Federal Statistical Office – Statweb
accessed 24 June 2010 Of the working population, 8.1% used public transportation to get to work, and 68.1% used a private car.

Religion

From the , 241 or 38.1% were

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, while 262 or 41.5% belonged to the

Swiss Reformed Church The Protestant Church in Switzerland (PCS), formerly named Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches until 31 December 2019, is a federation of 25 member churches – 24 cantonal churches and the Evangelical-Methodist Church of Switzerland. The P ...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 7 individuals (or about 1.11% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 14 individuals (or about 2.22% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 3 (or about 0.47% of the population) who were

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

ic. 93 (or about 14.72% of the population) belonged to no church, are

agnostic Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. (page 56 in 1967 edition) It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to ...

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, and 12 individuals (or about 1.90% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Walterswil about 276 or (43.7%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 43 or (6.8%) have completed additional higher education (either

university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

or a ''

Fachhochschule A (; plural ), abbreviated FH, is a university of applied sciences (UAS), in other words a Hochschule, German tertiary education institution that provides professional education in many applied sciences and applied arts, such as engineering, te ...

''). Of the 43 who completed tertiary schooling, 69.8% were Swiss men, 27.9% were Swiss women. , there were 56 students from Walterswil who attended schools outside the municipality.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Municipalities of the canton of Solothurn