Neuchâtel

Neuchâtel, in the Jura mountains on the Swiss–French border, is one of the country's watchmaking heartlands. It has 180,365 residents, 113,631 jobs and 12,694 enterprises. GDP was CHF 18.7 billion in 2022 and grew by 5.8% in real terms, the second-strongest rate of the 26 cantons, and GDP per head of CHF 106,165 was the fourth-highest. Employment, however, fell by 0.9% in 2024, the second-largest decline of any canton. Unemployment was 4.4% in August 2026, down from 4.6% a year earlier.

Electronics, instruments and watches employ 16,857 people, 14.8% of all jobs and 7.1 times the Swiss share, the second-highest concentration after Jura. The Swatch Group has its registered office in Neuchâtel, TAG Heuer and Cartier make watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and the Swatch Group component maker Nivarox-FAR is based in Le Locle; the watchmaking town planning of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009. Plastics, metals and metal products (1.6 times the Swiss share) and medical devices and other manufacturing (1.9 times, second-highest) support the watch cluster. The canton also hosts Philip Morris International's research centre in Neuchâtel, Bristol Myers Squibb's Celgene site in Boudry and the microtechnology research centre CSEM.

KPMG puts the maximum effective corporate tax rate at 14.89% for 2026, with lower rates on profits up to CHF 40 million, and the top income tax rate at 37.96%. Neuchâtel has the second-highest board-paralysis risk in ValIndex's 2026 study: for 1,189 of 2,291 audited companies (51.9%), no one would be left able to sign if the principal signatory died.