Gossau is a municipality in the district of Hinwil in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland. Besides the village of Gossau itself, the municipality includes the settlements of Bertschikon, Grüt, Herschmettlen and Ottikon.
Gossau has an area of. Of this area, 67% is used for agricultural purposes, while 14.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 17.9% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. housing and buildings made up 12% of the total area, while transportation infrastructure made up the rest. Of the total unproductive area, water made up 0.4% of the area. 11.7% of the total municipal area was undergoing some type of construction. The municipality is made up of five sections; Gossau, Bertschikon, Grüt, Herschmettlen and Ottikon. It stretches through the uppermost section of the Glatt valley. The topography is littered with ice age moraines and basin of the former Gossauer Ried.
Gossau has a population of. , 10.5% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. the gender distribution of the population was 49.9% male and 50.1% female. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 12.4%. Most of the population speaks German , with Italian being second most common and Portuguese being third. In the 2007 election the most popular party was the SVP which received 40.3% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CSP, the SPS and the FDP. The age distribution of the population is children and teenagers make up 26.5% of the population, while adults make up 62.5% and seniors make up 11%. The entire Swiss population is generally well educated. In Gossau about 82% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education. There are 3442 households in Gossau. Gossau has an unemployment rate of 1.38%. , there were 327 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 72 businesses involved in this sector. 922 people are employed in the secondary sector and there are 99 businesses in this sector. 1045 people are employed in the tertiary sector, with 243 businesses in this sector. 50% of the working population were employed full-time, and 50% were employed part-time. there were 2458 Catholics and 4523 Protestants in Gossau. In the, religion was broken down into several smaller categories. From the 2000 census, 56.4% were some type of Protestant, with 51.4% belonging to the Swiss Reformed Church and 4.9% belonging to other Protestant churches. 25.5% of the population were Catholic. Of the rest of the population, 0% were Muslim, 2.9% belonged to another religion, 3.2% did not give a religion, and 11.8% were atheist or agnostic. The historical population is given in the following table:
