Why we wrote this report.

We believe AI adoption is no choice. Whether to build it, deploy it, or simply use it — every advanced economy has to answer that question, and Austria has to answer it now.

We believe AI shapes who works on what, where value is created, and which countries compound their advantages over the next decade. The decisions made between 2026 and 2030 will set Austria's position for a generation.

We believe Austria has world-class assets — strong universities, a deep engineering tradition, a stable institutional fabric. And we believe it has structural weaknesses — a narrow base, a thinning entry-level pipeline, and persistent frontier brain drain — that the public conversation does not yet name with the precision it deserves.

The best way to fix a problem is to understand it. This report is our contribution to that understanding: a data-driven, science-based, independent diagnosis of where AI really matters at the workforce level — built on the individual employment records of 1.23 million Austrians, benchmarked against 37 European peers, with no political affiliation and no commercial interest in the answer.

If you find numbers we got wrong, write to us. If you find decisions worth making on the basis of these numbers, make them.