Economic overview: Austria has a well-developed market economy with a sizable - but falling - proportion of nationalized industry, an extensive social system, and a high standard of living. Austria's economy is closely integrated with Germany and other EU members - Austria joined the EU on 1 January 1995. Since the early 1980s, the Austrian economy has experienced stable growth. Following a mild recession in 1993, Austria's economy - driven by strong exports, investment, and private consumption - expanded 2.7% in 1994 and about 2.4% in 1995. The slowdown in 1995 was largely due to an appreciation of the Austrian schilling and its negative effect on exports and tourism. EU membership has had a positive impact on foreign investment and has helped to lower inflation. Despite Austria's generally favorable economic prospects, the government faces a number of economic challenges, especially budget consolidation. Smaller than expected revenues and rising welfare payments caused the budget deficit to climb to 7.1% of GDP in 1995. Austria also faces a growing unemployment problem. Although low by European standards, Austria's unemployment rate has risen gradually during the 1990s as companies restructured to meet competition from the EU single market and Eastern Europe.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $152 billion (1995 est.)
GDP real growth rate: 2.4% (1995 est.)
GDP per capita: $19,000 (1995 est.)
GDP composition by sector: agriculture: 2% industry: 34% services: 64% (1994)
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 2.3% (1995 est.)
Labor force: 3.47 million (1989) by occupation: services 56.4%, industry and crafts 35.4%, agriculture and forestry 8.1% note: an estimated 200,000 Austrians are employed in other European countries; foreign laborers in Austria number 177,840, about 5% of labor force (1988)
Unemployment rate: 4.6% (1995 est.)
Budget:
revenues: $65 billion
expenditures: $75.8 billion, including capital expenditures of $NA
(1995 est.)
Industries: food, iron and steel, machines, textiles, chemicals,
electrical, paper and pulp, tourism, mining, motor vehicles