408,000 people in Vorarlberg: We continue to grow

407,911 people currently live in Vorarlberg. The number of people with their main residence increased by around 4,100 people year-on-year, which means that the population growth was around 20.6 percent higher than on March 31, 2022, the Vorarlberg State Office for Statistics announced on Thursday. Most of the new immigrants, around 1,120 people, came from the Ukraine; a total of 2,200 refugees have immigrated from there since the war.

The population growth of the past twelve months can be attributed to both a positive birth rate and a positive migration balance, which made a decisive contribution to the increase by almost 86 percent, according to the state office in its current report. 82,401 foreigners from over 150 nations live in Vorarlberg. Their share of the resident population is 20.2 percent. Almost 20,000 come from Germany, around 13,000 from Turkey.

Around 35 percent of people with their main residence live in the four most populous communities in Vorarlberg, each with over 20,000 inhabitants: Bregenz, Dornbirn, Feldkirch and Lustenau. Half of Vorarlbergers live in medium-sized communities with 2,500 or more inhabitants. 15 percent live in 59 small communities. 66 percent of the population is of working age between 15 and 65 years. 16 percent of Vorarlbergers are children and young people. 18.2 percent are seniors (over 65), of whom 61 are currently over a hundred years old.

Above all, the Rhine Valley communities are growing: Strong growth rates of over ten percent and absolute increases of over 1,000 main residences can be found in Dornbirn, Feldkirch, Lustenau, Hohenems and Götzis. In the past ten years, Vorarlberg’s population has increased by nine percent (33,732 people). In October 2020, the 400,000 resident mark was exceeded, meaning that Vorarlberg’s population has more than doubled since 1951.