Integration Report
The Austrian government's most recent report on integration shows how immigration presents challenges and opportunities for the labor and education systems
Servus!
On Monday, minister for women, families, integration and media Susanne Raab presented the findings of her ministry’s annual integration report. Austria, as I’ve written before, is an Einwanderungsland, a country of inward migration, and has been since the 1960s. In a country where deaths outnumber births, the population only continues to grow because of migration. Without it, Austria’s population would, according to projections, fall from around 9 million today to 7.12 million by 2075. Austria continues to need immigration—even if it doesn’t necessarily want it—and it represents a net good for the country.
Statistics produced for the integration ministry by Statistics Austria and the Austrian Integration Fund show that, in 2023, around 195,000 people moved to Austria—including 13,400 Austrians returning from abroad. Around half of those who moved to Austria in 2024, 94,000, were European Union citizens, while another 87,500 were third country nationals, among them 15,700 Ukrainian displaced persons, 15,200 Syrians, and 7,200 Turks.
The percentage of the Austrian population with a migrant background—meaning, first and second-generation immigrants—now stands at 27.2 percent. Among non-Austrian citizens in Austria, the largest group are Germans, some 233,000, followed by Romanian, Turkish, Serbian, and Hungarian citizens. The overall percentage of the population without Austrian citizenship has grown from 12.5 percent in 2014 to 19.7 percent today: the product of both rising levels of immigration and one of Europe’s most restrictive citizenship laws, one which marginalizes and precludes non-citizens from joining the club.
The nature of immigration into Austria since the refugee crisis of 2015 continues to present enormous challenges for Austria’s economy and society that are clear in the statistics. Non-Austrians living in Austria have lower annual salaries and are more likely to be unemployed or live on or below the poverty line than Austrians. This is particularly true of immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among whom the unemployment rate is a shocking 29.6 percent. The percentage of Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis who are economically active stands at only 48 percent, meaning more than half are inactive.
Another stress point is the education system. 27 percent of pupils in Austrian schools have a first language other than German—up from 20.4 percent 10 years ago. This linguistic plurality could be a boon for Austria in the long-term; in the short-term, however, a lack of German knowledge is having a negative impact on educational outcomes. The percentage of people in Austria who fail to complete compulsory education for whom their first language is German stands at 3 percent. Among those whose first language isn’t German, that figure rises to 8.7 percent. Among male GFL pupils, it’s 11 percent. Fixing these inequalities constitutes generational work, and there’s no guarantee of success.
The tendency in the past has been to exclude asylum seekers from the labor system in order to protect the market in some sense, but this move has clearly proven detrimental for both parties. Getting the class of 2015, meaning asylum recipients from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, into work is absolutely vital. The Austrian economy has labor shortages in key industries, while work, beyond offering human dignity and financial independence, is itself an important tool for integration: linguistically, educationally, and socially. In the state of Upper Austria, the regional government is testing a pilot program for asylum recipients that would train them to work in key industries. This could be a tremendous opportunity for future employers and employees both.
Bis bald!
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