Where jobs are now being radically cut in Austria and what happens next

Austrian companies are said to have announced a total of 2025 alone 8,314 employees to cut – this is what the trade union-affiliated Momentum Institute recorded in a new evaluation for the KURIER. A worrying value, as the deputy. Chief economist of the institute Barbara Schuster analyzes: “The bad news about job cuts and personnel cuts in the media has not stopped in recent years. In 2023 there were still 5,000 people affected, two years later almost 6,900.” “But of course that would only be the tip of the iceberg,” she explains. Because most job cuts, for example in small companies, would not even make it past the media’s perception threshold.

What happens next in 2026

This year too, as stated at the beginning, reports would be sent monthly bankruptcies and job cuts are coming. “However, the situation has improved somewhat,” says Schuster. “In terms of media, there are 2,000 jobs that we have recorded. In many industrial sectors there has been a slight upward trend recently.” The official insolvency statistics would also record a slight decline in the first quarter of this year – Statistics Austria reported 2.5 percent fewer bankruptcies compared to the previous year.

Nevertheless, the situation on the labor market remains tense. The national one Unemployment rate was 7.1 percent in May – more than 300,000 people were registered as unemployed. “The situation is particularly bleak for older people,” says Schuster. “Four out of ten unemployed people over 50 have been unemployed for over a year. They need a real job boom so that companies can hire them.” The last time there was one like this was after the corona pandemic. But it will probably still be a while before the next upswing occurs.