Unemployment in otherwise prosperous central European Austria has risen over the past year, with the greatest increase observed among the migrant community.
The latest figures from the Arbeitsmarktservice Österreich (Austrian Public Employment Service, AMS) show that last month, 410,854 people were employed, some 8.7 per cent of the workforce. While this represented a 5.6 per cent increase on average nationwide, actual incidence of unemployment were highly concentrated in certain areas, and among certain communities.
Rising unemployment was highest among foreigners, who were twice as likely to have become unemployed as native Austrians over the past year, at 14.7-per-cent, reports Der Kronen Zeitung. The length of unemployment is also increasing in Austria, with job seekers now having to search for 126 days on average to find a job, a rise of 19 days since last year.
Geographic distribution of unemployment across Austria / AMS
State by state breakdowns of unemployment shows that as well as joblessness being highly concentrated among foreigners, it is also growing faster in regions of Austria most closely associated with migration and the migration crisis over the past year. Capital Vienna (Wien), which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants arrive by train from the south witnessed the most rapid increase in unemployment — some 17.4 per cent this year.
Border state Burgenland (Bgld), making up the entirety of the Austria-Hungary border and thus taking the brunt of migratory movement this year saw the second biggest rise at 11.2 per cent. Northern states Niederösterreich (NO) and Oberösterreich (OO), which both stand on the migration route out of Vienna and into Germany saw the next largest rises with 8.1 and 8.8 per cent respectively.
In contrast, the Western state of Tyrol (Tirol) which borders Switzerland and Italy saw no rise in unemployment whatever in the past year, bucking the national trend.
In terms of new migrant arrivals, those hardest hit states may expect a reprieve in the coming months. After Hungary completed it’s border fence with their southern neighbours mid last month, the number of illegals crossing their borders fell to almost zero, as newcomers flowed instead through Croatia and Slovenia.
While these migrants will still enter Austria, either settling down or continuing on their way to nations such as Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, they will enter instead through southern states of Styria (Stmk) and Carinthia (Ktn), which both border Slovenia.
The observable effects of mass migration in Austria follow a pattern in Germany, revealed by a leaked internal government presentation and reported on by Breitbart London last week. The official figures by the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, BA) showed estimates that 81 per cent of immigrants entering Germany in 2015 were completely unqualified, and many of them were heading straight for unemployment.
As a consequence of mass migration to Germany, BA anticipated 400,000 new unemployment benefit claimants in the coming year, an increase that would cost taxpayers at least €855 million.
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