At the end of December 2023, 399,005 people in Austria were registered with the AMS as unemployed or in training. Of these, 329,328 people were unemployed and 69,677 people were in training. The unemployment rate was 7.8 percent at the end of the year. The number of job vacancies fell slightly and stood at 92,284 at the end of the year (2022: 109,797).
Compared to the previous year, unemployment among women has increased less than among men. The development in the area of long-term unemployment is positive, which reached its peak in April 2021 at 148,436 people and has since been almost halved, explained Labor Minister Martin Kocher (ÖVP) today. He further calculated: “From the perspective of the labor market, the year 2023 built on a very low previous year’s level of 2022 with an average unemployment of 332,645 people. In 2023, only a slight increase was observed with an average of 341,319 unemployed people.”
Basically, the minister said: “The Austrian labor market can be described as resilient overall in terms of its development in the past year 2023.” A continuous decline in unemployment was recorded in the first quarter. From April onwards, this dynamic slowed down. This development continued in the following months, but “did not deteriorate significantly compared to the previous year,” said Kocher.
Positive development in long-term unemployment
It must also be taken into account that Ukrainians will be fully included in the labor market statistics in 2023. As a result, unemployment has increased statistically, but at the same time the number of employed Ukrainians in the Austrian labor market has increased from around 13,500 at the beginning of the year to around 17,000.
The development in the area of long-term unemployment is positive, which reached its peak in April 2021 at 148,436 people and has since been almost halved. This means that at the end of 2023, 78,506 people were long-term unemployed – i.e. without employment for more than a year. In addition, the number of employed people continued to rise. “With around 3,915,000 currently employed people, the Austrian labor market is recording an employment record – never before have so many people in Austria been employed at the turn of the year,” said the Minister of Labor and Economic Affairs today.
