Vienna Will Have a Population of Two Million People Soon
Vienna will reach a population of two million people sooner than expected. This was predicted to happen by the year 2027 however, a new wave of migration is boosting the population number.
Vienna Will Have a Population of 2 Million People Sooner than Expected. / Picture: © Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
The forecast that Vienna will soon again have a population of two million has been around for some time. Due to the strong growth in the past year, this point in time will probably come sooner than expected. The reason for this is mainly immigration, which skyrocketed last year in particular due to the Ukraine refugees. It would not be the first time that Vienna has had a population of more than two million. In the 1910 census, there were 2.08 million people in the federal capital before World War I, according to MeinBezirk.
According to ORF, it is the strongest growth since annual records began in 1962 when there was still a small minus in the population, which became larger in the 1960s and 1970s: Vienna shrank. Things went uphill again in the 1990s. The previous peak occurred in 2015, after which there was a plus, but not as significant until last year.1, 982,000 inhabitants lived in the city as of January 1, 2023. Now, according to current figures, 18,000 people are still missing the two-million mark. The situation in Ukraine makes forecasting difficult because it is unclear whether people will stay in Vienna, go back, or more will come. In any case, the influx is making Vienna a young city.
Ramon Bauer, head of Vienna's provincial statistics, told ORF's "Wien heute" format that the city has grown by about 50,000 people in 2022. Half of this can be attributed to immigration from Ukraine. A quarter may be explained to immigration from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, as reported by MeinBezirk.
As stated by ORF, "In terms of average age, we're just over 41 right now. All the other federal states are older. Vienna's strongest age group is primarily the 20 to 40 generation. This is mainly due to immigration," says Bauer. Young adults are a particularly mobile generation, he said. And many immigrants are young adults. Four out of ten people living in Vienna were not born in Austria. Population growth is distributed differently among the districts. There was growth in all districts, with the largest increase of 4.4 percent in Donaustadt.