Galgenen

Galgenen is a municipality in March District in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland. Galgenen is first mentioned in 1229 as Galgênne. Galgenen has an area, , of . Of this area, 50.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while 39.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 9% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (0.4%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains). It consists of the village of Galgenen and village section of Siebnen-Galgenen as well as the hamlets of Achern, Buechli, Stöckli and Steinweid. Galgenen has a population (as of ) of . , 17.4% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 10.6%. Most of the population () speaks German (90.7%), with Albanian being second most common ( 3.0%) and Serbo-Croatian being third (1.4%). the gender distribution of the population was 51.3% male and 48.7% female. The age distribution, , in Galgenen is; 1,008 people or 25.7% of the population is between 0 and 19. 1,194 people or 30.4% are 20 to 39, and 1,305 people or 33.2% are 40 to 64. The senior population distribution is 261 people or 6.6% are 65 to 74. There are 110 people or 2.8% who are 70 to 79 and 49 people or 1.25% of the population who are over 80. there are 1,575 households, of which 448 households (or about 28.4%) contain only a single individual. 116 or about 7.4% are large households, with at least five members. In the 2007 election the most popular party was the SVP which received 52.1% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (18.9%), the SPS (12.4%) and the CVP (12.1%). The entire Swiss population is generally well educated. In Galgenen about 67.4% of the population (between age 25-64) have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Galgenen has an unemployment rate of 1.59%. , there were 183 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 71 businesses involved in this sector.