Austria’s population is growing mainly due to immigration and aging: as the results of the 2021 census, published by Statistics Austria on Monday, show, long-term trends in population development continue unabated. Households have become smaller. The population has increasingly higher educational qualifications, the most common formal educational qualification is the apprenticeship certificate.
While there used to be surveys with questionnaires, since 2011 the census has been conducted by Statistics Austria as a register census – so only administrative data is used. From 2011 to 2021, the population grew by 6.7 percent from 8.4 million to almost nine million. At the cut-off date of the 2021 census, 31 October 2021, there were 8,969,068 people living in Austria.
The mean age is 43.2 years
The mean age of the population as of the date of the 2021 census was 43.2 years (2011: 41.8 years). The share of over-65s has risen to almost one-fifth (from 15.2 percent to 19.4 percent), while the share of 15 to 64-year-olds has fallen to about two-thirds (from 69.4 percent to 66.2 percent) . The share under the age of 15 also fell from 15.4 percent to 14.4 percent. “The trend of a growing and aging population in Austria will continue in the coming years,” said Tobias Thomas, Director General of Statistics Austria.
The share of people living in Austria whose place of birth was outside Austria was 20.4 percent in 2021 (about 1.83 million). Relative to the working population (between 15 and 64 years), the share of those born abroad was almost a quarter (24.8 percent; 2011: 18.6 percent).
Trend towards smaller households
The trend towards smaller households is also continuing: since the 2011 census, the number of private households has grown by 10.4 percent, significantly faster than the number of private households (6.7 percent). In 1961 less than half (46.7 percent) of households had only one or two people, in 2021 this will already be the case in more than two-thirds of all private households (68.7 percent). The share of single-person households has almost doubled from 19.7 percent in 1961 to 38.3 percent in 2021. The average household size has continuously decreased in recent decades, in 2021 it was 2.19 people (1961: 3.02 people).
In terms of the education of the population, the most common formal qualification is an apprenticeship – 30.9 percent of people in Austria over the age of 15 had an apprenticeship in 2021. Of the approximately 1.18 million people with an academic education, women (54.1 percent) for.
Austrian women are increasingly better educated
Overall, Statistics Austria observes a long-term trend towards higher formal qualifications over the years and generations of education, with the greatest change among women. Only 27.9 percent of women had not completed compulsory education until 2021, compared to 73 percent in 1971. At the same time, the share of women aged 15 and older with a college degree has risen from 1 percent in 1971 to 16.3 percent per year. in 2021. Among men, the share of school age dropped from 48.9 percent (1971) to 20.8 percent (2021), while the share of university graduates rose from 3.5 percent to 14.4 percent.
Austrians are mobile when it comes to their workplace: every seventh worker in Austria (nearly 600,000 people) leaves their federal state of residence to pursue their profession. With almost 285,000 people, Vienna has the largest share of “commuters”. By the way, workers across Austria travel an average of 27 kilometers to their workplace, with Viennese workers covering the shortest distance at about 17 kilometers, while those furthest to their workplace in Burgenland travel an average of 41 kilometers. kilometers.
Source: Krone
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