2.038 million people of foreign birth lived in Austria at the beginning of 2024, which corresponds to 22.3% of the total population, more than one in five people in the country. In a five-year comparison since the beginning of 2019, the proportion of the population born abroad has increased by 2.7 percentage points. Most people in this group were born in Germany (265,100), Bosnia-Herzegovina (178,900) and Turkey (165,300). Around 195,000 people immigrated to Austria from abroad in 2023 (2022: 261,900) and around 128,300 people emigrated abroad (2022: 125,000). With almost 19,800 immigrants, German citizens made up the largest group, followed by people from Romania (19,300), Ukraine (15,700) and Syria (15,200).
Over 40 percent of Vienna’s population was born abroad
The proportion of the population with a foreign place of birth in the state’s total population was highest in Vienna at 40.2 percent – almost 806,200 people with a foreign place of birth lived in Vienna at the beginning of 2024. Measured against the total population, after Vienna, the most people of foreign birth lived in Vorarlberg (23.2%), Salzburg (21.7%) and Tyrol (20.9%). The lowest proportion was recorded in Burgenland at 13.6 percent. In a five-year comparison, the federal states of Styria (+23.0%), Burgenland (+22.8%) and Carinthia (+20.9%) recorded the largest increase in people born abroad. The lowest increase was in Tyrol (+15.1%) and Vorarlberg (+14.8%).
Unemployment among foreigners is highest in Vienna and Carinthia
The unemployment rate in Austria was 6.4 percent in 2023, which corresponds to a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous year. Foreigners are still more likely to be unemployed than nationals. While the unemployment rate among Austrian citizens fell from 5.4 percent in 2022 to 5.3 percent in 2023, the rate among foreign nationals rose from 9.1 percent in 2022 to 9.6 percent in 2023. Especially This difference is clearly visible in Vienna and Carinthia. In Vienna, the unemployment rate for Austrians was 8.1 percent and for foreigners 15.1 percent, meaning both values exceeded the Austrian average. In Carinthia there was also an increased unemployment rate for Austrians at 6.6 percent and for foreigners at 8.8 percent. Burgenland, on the other hand, recorded the lowest unemployment rate among foreign citizens at 4.8 percent, followed by Tyrol at 5.2 percent.
More than a quarter of the students speak a colloquial language other than German
In the 2022/23 school year, 27.0 percent of Austrian students had a first language other than German, which represents a slight increase of 1.0 percentage points compared to 2017/18. However, the distribution of these students varies greatly between school types.
At special schools and polytechnic schools, the proportion of students with a non-German first language was particularly high – at 42.9 percent and 38.9 percent, respectively. At 34.8 percent, the proportion at new middle schools was also above average. In contrast, only around half as many, namely 21.0 percent of students at an AHS and 19.7 percent at a BHS, had a first language other than German. The lowest proportion was recorded at vocational schools, where only 13.7 percent of students stated a language other than German as their first language. In Vienna the proportion of students with a non-German first language was highest at 51.7 percent, while it was lowest in Carinthia at 16.6 percent.
ÖIF publications to download
The Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF) continually provides figures, data and facts on the topics of migration and asylum in various publication series. The information brochure “Federal States” is published annually. It presents current figures and information on the origins and migration movements of refugees and migrants as well as on the areas of the labor market, education and language in all nine federal states of Austria in a compact and clear manner and provides a direct comparison to the last five years. The brochure is available in the media library on the Integration Fund’s homepage for download available.