
According to the Austrian broadcasting company Österreichische Rundfunk (ORF), almost 20% of the population of Austria in 2020 was born abroad.
That means 1.765 million (19.8%) of Austria’s current almost nine million residents/citizens were born overseas.
As might be expected, that number is the highest in Vienna, the capital city, where 36.7% of people currently living here were not born in Austria.
The lowest number was 11.6 percent in Burgenland, the easternmost state of Austria’s nine states (Länder in German) and a state with the country’s lowest population.
The latest figures come from a report by the Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF), which states there has been an increase of foreign-born residents in Austria since 2015 of around 18.9%.
Where were most foreign-born residents in Austria born?
As also might be expected, the largest number of foreign-born residents in Austria are from neighboring Germany, with a total number of more than 237,800 people now living in Austria born there.
This is followed by 170,500 from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and 159,600 from Turkey.
The ÖIF report also comments the income of foreign-born residents in Austria averages 80% of the income of Austrian nationals, with Austrians earning an average net income of 27,00 euros, while foreigners earned 21,600 euros.
The numbers also seem to suggest, without a sizable number of foreign-born residents in Austria, the country would likely see a rapidly declining population.
More information is available on the ÖIF website on the Bundesländer – Statistiken zu Migration & Integration 2020 report — where, if you are one of those people born abroad and needing to learn German, you can also find free language-learning resources in English and nine other languages.
I'm a journalist, and the founder of Oh My Vienna. I have been living in Vienna since 2016 as an immigrant, because 'expat' is just a fancy word that means exactly that.
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