Austria’s population is continuing to grow mainly due to immigration and its ageing population, the 2021 Census conducted by Statistics Austria has revealed.
Overall, the country’s long-term trends remain undisrupted, with the Austrian population living in smaller households, getting higher educational qualifications and prioritising mobility when deciding on a job.
Commenting on the Census results, the Director General of Statistics Austria, Tobias Thomas, said that the register census, as an advanced type of census, considerably lessens the constraints placed on citizens.
“While in some other countries, such as Germany, the census is still carried out in the classic way by means of surveys, Austria has since 2011 been one of the countries in which only administrative data is used for this,” Director GeneralThomas said.
The overall statistics show that there was a 6.7 per cent increase in population, from 8.4 million to almost nine million, in comparison to the results of the 2011 Census.
In the 2021 Census, 8.9 million people were registered as living in Austria. People over 65 years old had their share reach 19.4 per cent, whereas those 15- to 64-year-olds had their share fall to 66.2 per cent. Furthermore, those under 15 years old had their share fall as well (14.4 per cent).
The average age of Austrians is 43.2 years old now compared to 41.8 years old in 2011. The total number of people who were born outside of Austria climbed to 1,829,824, which is 20.4 per cent of the population.
In addition, the share of the working population who were born in foreign countries was 24.8 per cent in 2021, respectively 1.4 million people.
The number of private households in Austria has increased by 10.4 per cent since the reported number in the 2011 Census, whereas the population of these households has increased by 6.7 per cent.
Over the years, the number of people living in households has decreased as well. The average number living in a household was 2.7 persons in 1981 and 2.38 persons in 2001, compared to 2.19 persons in 2021.
Earlier in the 70s in Austria, 30.9 per cent of people who were over the age of 15 years old had an apprenticeship diploma. Regarding higher education, the majority of people with an academic degree were women (54.1 per cent).
Concerning secondary qualifications, there were more men than women, whereas women accounted for the larger share of tertiary qualifications. The number of women graduating in universities has also increased over the years, the same as the number of men did as well.
