Expatriation: Hungarians are flooding into Austria

New Austrian labour market data have been published. It is striking that Austria generates its demand for foreign labour from two main sources. One is Germany, with 83 million people, and the other is Hungary, with just under 10 million people.

The Austrian social security authorities have published the latest January statistics on foreign workers in Austria, Világgazdaság reports. It is important to note that the Österreichische Sozialversicherung only counts registered full-time employees.

The data show that in the first month of 2024, a total of 980,567 foreigners were working in the Austrian labour market. This is a considerable number, given the fact that Austria has a population of around 9.1 million. This means that one in nine people in the country is a foreign national.

Last January, the figure was only 948,013. This means that in the space of a year, the number of Austrians in the registered international workforce has increased by about 3.5%.

Hungarian workforce in Austria

Pixabay

It is striking that Austria generates its foreign labour demands from two main sources: Germany (with 83 million people), and Hungary (with just under 10 million people). As of now, Austria employs 127,170 German workers. Right behind them are Hungarians, with 124,820 people. This means that Hungary, with eight times fewer inhabitants, provides the same number of workers to Austria as Germany, Világgazdaság writes.

Comparing the 124,820 Hungarian workers to the total number of foreigners registered in Austria, one in eight of them are Hungarian citizens. This comes as no surprise as there are plenty of examples of headhunting firms recruiting Hungarian workers specifically for jobs in Austria.

The January figures are somewhat unfavourable from a Hungarian labour market perspective as they demonstrate that 1,788 Hungarians went to work in Austria in the space of a month from December to January.

The full picture also includes the fact that between August and November last year, around 8,000 Hungarians left Austria. At that time, 126,656 were still staying in Austria towards the last month of summer, but this had fallen to 118,930 by the end of autumn.

Can Hungarians be lured back home?

It’s always difficult to predict, but based on the experience of previous years and the seasonality of the Austrian labour market, it is expected that the number of Hungarians working in Austria will continue to rise in the coming months. What is more, it cannot be ruled out that by spring, they will form the largest foreign worker community in the neighbouring country (ahead of the Germans).

According to Világgazdaság, these workers would have plenty of room in the Hungarian economy, which is facing a severe labour shortage. Attila Gazsi, deputy chairman of the National Association of Entrepreneurs and Employers (VOSZ), told Portfolio in early February that “the key to making the labour market more dynamic is to lure Hungarian workers working abroad back home”.

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