Alavus
Alavus () is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Southern Ostrobothnia region, southeast of Seinäjoki, north of Tampere and north of Helsinki. The town has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . Neighbouring municipalities are Alajärvi, Kuortane, Seinäjoki, Virrat and Ähtäri. Agriculture and forestry employ a significant share of the population. Most of the industry in Alavus is related to construction: materials, design and contractors. Alavus has 60 lakes with of shoreline. The town is unilingually Finnish . Geography. Villages. In 1967, Alavus had five legally recognized villages "(henkikirjakylät)": Demographics. In 2020, 16.7% of the population of Alavus was under the age of 15, 54.6% were aged 15 to 64, and 28.7% were over the age of 64. The average age was 46.1, above the national average of 43.4 and regional average of 44.7. Speakers of Finnish made up 98.3% of the population and speakers of Swedish made up 0.1%, while the share of speakers of foreign languages was 1.6%. Foreign nationals made up 1.2% of the total population. The chart below, describing the development of the total  population of Alavus from 1975 to 2020, encompasses the municipality's area as of 2021. Urban areas. In 2019, out of the total population of 6,919, 4,485 people lived in urban areas and 3,641 in sparsely populated areas, while the coordinates of 64 people were unknown. This made Alavus's degree of urbanization 60.7%. The urban population in the municipality was divided between three urban areas as follows: Economy. In 2018, 9.1% of the workforce of Alavus worked in primary production (agriculture, forestry and fishing), 24.0% in secondary production (e.g. manufacturing, construction and infrastructure), and 65.6% in services. In 2019 , the unemployment rate was 8.5%, and the share of pensioners in the population was 33.0%. The ten largest employers in Alavus in 2019 were as follows: