Emigration from the West, the Canary in the Coalmine

1.4m people left Austria 2011-23, and with nothing to stop the fiscal and financial bleeding, the current system™ is done, and whatever runway is left, it won't be enough to salvage it

One more featured piece about the ten-year anniversary of the Migration Crisis and its impact—and I couldn’t really believe that it was the Branch Covidian, far-leftoid daily rag Der Standard that actually published something interesting about that particular hot potato. Of course, the topic was discussed™ in virtually identical terms across Our Free Press™, as the simultaneous appearance of various other pieces shows (e.g., by state broadcaster ORF or centre-right daily Kurier).

But first things first, shall we? To set this up, let’s merely note that one of the main pro-mass immigration arguments™ was that, due to long-declining fertility rates, Western countries needed™ immigrants to keep the system going.

The main factors here shall be named briefly: declining fertility rates plus rising life expectation stands poised to overwhelm Western welfare state systems, mainly due to the precipitous decline of the ratio of those who work and thus pay into the various social security systems vs. those who receive retirement benefits. Yes, there’s much more to this equation, but for our purposes, this will do.

Now, talk to anyone and enquire about whether they like to pay taxes, especially of the high and progressive kinds, and consider the utter depravity, if not outright insanity of gov’t spending, you’re likely to receive a variation of the below stylised answer:

I know I’m paying way more into ‘the system’ than I ever get back, but that can’t be changed (plus doing so affords me a certain lifestyle).

Thus a high-powered lawyer I know quite well; while acknowledging that my heretical™ opinions on these subject matters hold true, all I received in reply to my protestation (‘you’ve got kids, don’t you think you should at least try to change this?’) were a weary smirk and the retort that ‘there’s nothing anyone can do’.

Now, I do think that this is largely correct: Western governance has become so inert, beset with a myriad of issues, troubles, and incongruities that substantial, self-conscious change is beyond both the realm of the possible of our depraved juste milieu much like the proverbial quip commonly, if falsely, ascribed to Marie Antoinette on the verge of the French Revolution: ‘let them eat cake’ is, fittingly, apparently an invention by Rousseau who dreamed up this nonsense a quarter-century earlier.¹

So, having thus set the stage, let’s consider the thing that must not be named: while every bit of official data (see the write-up with references to the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland) points quite clearly to gaping fiscal holes resulting from non-Western immigration, here’s a thought to ponder: what do you, as society-at-large, do if highly-trained—and thus high-earning/tax-paying—individuals leave?

Behold the evidence—in my translation, with emphases and [snark] added.

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1.4m Emigrants in 12 Years: Austria’s Overlooked Emigration Woes

A study is the first to measure how many immigrants are leaving Austria again. The majority are well-qualified EU citizens.

By Joseph Gepp, Der Standard, 27 Aug. 2025 [source; archived]

Whether it’s people from all over the world fleeing to Austria—or foreign skilled workers for whom the right conditions must be created here—Austria’s migration debates [same elsewhere in the West, by the way] primarily revolve around immigration.

Completely ignored is the other side of the coin: emigration. Yet it is immense, as a new study commissioned by the Federation of Austrian Industries [orig. Industriellenvereinigung, or IV, the country’s main business lobby group] by population experts Rainer Münz and Jemal Yaryyeva shows [I’ve looked far and wide, but I couldn’t find that paper (yet), which bears the title ‘Auswanderung aus Österreich: die andere Seite der Migration’ (Emigration from Austria: the Other Side of Migration), hence I may only present this write-up].

While around 2.2 million people entered or returned to the country between 2011 and 2023, 1.4 million also left. The figures were presented at the European Forum Alpbach [a summer lobbying fest co-funded by the Open Society Foundations] in Tyrol by IV President Georg Knill and Integration Minister Claudia Plakolm (ÖVP).

‘In the last ten years, 170,000 qualified workers have left Austria’, says Knill. The majority of those emigrating come from the EU or wealthy OECD countries, adding:

We are losing valuable human capital that we urgently need here. We cannot afford that.

I am concerned about the significant emigration of both qualified Austrians [orig. Einheimischer] and well-integrated immigrants. Many leave after just a few years in Austria.

Thus study author Münz in response to a query from Der Standard.

Half Leave Again

Some particulars: of the 1.4m emigrants in twelve years, around half were EU citizens. Another 0.4m were third-country nationals from outside the EU. The remaining approximately 300,000 were Austrian emigrants.

And another data point that illustrates the scale of the problem: between 2011 and 2019, almost one million people of foreign origin of working age came to Austria. However, 56% of them had emigrated again by 2023 [so, the relevant follow-up question—which, of course, remains unasked is this: who remains?]

In the race between countries for the workforce of the future in the face of demographic change, Austria is visibly losing ground. Moreover, ‘the pace of this [out-] migration has been accelerating recently’, write Münz and Yaryyeva in their study:

Those who immigrate stay in the country for increasingly shorter periods or less frequently. After just five to six years, half had left Austria again [and if those data don’t scream massive policy failure at those who oversee it, I dunno what else—in addition to former chancellor Sebastian Kurz explicitly stating that mass immigration had been a mistake].

Decision Against Austria

Many immigrants who leave have previously worked in Austria—which doesn’t prevent them from leaving. The largest group of those already working: women from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, followed by men from the same region. ‘These people have a choice’, says the IV’ Knill, adding:

They consciously decide against Austria and for other countries.

What’s the [sic] reason? [observe how legacy media spins this: emigration is always a mix of various factors and cannot be reduced to but one facet]. The Federation of Austrian Industries (IV) identifies a number of factors behind the high level of emigration: Knill emphasises taxes, such as non-wage labour costs, which are [even] five percentage points higher in Austria than in neighbouring Germany. Or—a well-known complaint among employers—the fact that full-time work is not profitable for employees [that’s so disingenuous, I dunno know what to say other than: if the employers say so, it speaks about gov’t taxes levied on employees—and let’s remind everyone that that is the main business lobby who says this while sitting next to a cabinet-level official].

Country of Immigration

Other factors include the fixation on German for official procedures and the sometimes patchy childcare in rural areas, which has a negative impact once families arrive. ‘Overall, Austria must see itself as a modern, equal-opportunity immigration country’, says Knill, ‘in administrative procedures, in companies, in language, in attitude.’

Claudia Plakom, meanwhile, presents what the government intends to do to combat the problem. She points, for example, to the offer of German courses for companies and the effort to accelerate the recognition of foreign qualifications. But whether this will really be enough to reverse the trend remains to be seen.

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Bottom Lines

This is about as shitty and non-informational as it gets; while hardly surprising, coverage in other legacy media outlets is roughly comparably bad.

I would have love to discuss the study, but it’s not yet available.

And then there are the implications: if only ‘Western’ immigrants—that is, ‘only labour migration from North America, Oceania, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Israel, India, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan is unambiguously positive from a treasury perspective’, as Dutch researchers show—pay into the system and those from elsewhere collect benefits in excess of their contributions, there’s but one inescapable conclusion to be drawn:

The end of ‘the welfare state’—and thus of the Western post-1945 way of governance—is done.

It’s probably been dead for some time, but now the putrefying stench has become too obviously annoying to be ignored, even (sic) by main business lobbyists and gov’t officials alike.

Here’s a tell-tale sign:

With 270K Germans Leaving, Berlin Imposes Crippling Exit Taxes to Prevent 'Republikflucht'

But do note that the scale of this issue is much larger, proportion-wise, in Austria: 1.4m emigrants in 12 years means more than 100K leaving per year (assuming, for the sake of the argument, annually equal numbers of emigrants): Austria has approx. 9.1m inhabitants while Germany is home to some 83-84m people: some 116K emigrants annually constitute some 1.2-1.3% of Austria’s resident population while the 270K emigrants from Germany may be as little as .3%.

How much longer until ‘we’—by which I mean ‘this system’—are done?

Well, technically, all Western gov’ts are bankrupt, and they are merely propped up by the continued sale of gov’t securities and bonds, i.e., new debt is taken on to pay off (sic) existing obligations. Take, e.g., the Austrian case—its economy has been in a recession for 2-3 years (p. 9), which begs the question: who continues to buy official gov’t debt?

Here, the answer is obvious: 80-85% of debt issued by the Austrian gov’t is typically bought by fellow EU countries; this is also true, by and large, of other EU member-states. As per the most recent data from the Austrian Central Bank (p. 52), it is no exaggeration to note that foreign institutional investors (especially from Europe) are driving most net purchases.

Imagine the EU/EEC being something like a game of musical chairs in this regard: everybody buys debt obligations from their neighbours, which massively increases the reliance of all individual member-states on each other. And then imagine, for a moment, that the music stops—as it did in 2007/08, with the Greek example being the relevant—and, as regards the systemic nature of this set-up, necessary teachable moment.

I submit that the EU/EEC is something like a suicide pact at this point: no-one is able to, or permitted, any move that upsets this particular apple cart (too much), lest the entire house of cards—by which is mean accounting shenanigans—is coming down all at-one: any EU/EEC country that runs into problems will affect all other member-states.

I envision the main obstacle being continued refinancing at acceptably low (by which is meant possible-to-service) interest rates. If there’s a spike in interest rates for debt obligations of one medium or big member-state, the fiscal-financial contagion will spread like a California wildfire in dry season.

For 300+ years or so, since the creation of Central Banks, the main tool to keep interest rates down were credible and reliable interest payments assured—securitised—by parliamentary assemblies underwriting them by regular taxation.

Now, if you image this system akin to a Jenga tower and take out the foundational blocks—high-earning/tax-paying individuals who are leaving in staggering numbers—you gotta ask yourself:

Not so much what gives, but how soon will these shenanigans come to a halt due to investors no longer seeing enough profits to keep this going?

And once you ask this question, the overarching problem becomes obvious—and too big to ignore.

Needless to say, gov’t and big business doesn’t want you to entertain these thoughts.

Change is upon us, whether we like it or not.

And rather sooner—2030, anyone?—than later.

Buckle up, this will be very bumpy.

1. Even (sic) Wikipedia relates the origins of this misattribution and slander quite correctly:

Although the phrase is conventionally attributed to Marie Antoinette, there is no evidence that she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliché.^[2] The phrase can actually be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions in 1765, 24 years prior to the French Revolution, and when Antoinette was nine years old and had never been to France. The phrase was not attributed to Antoinette until decades after her death.^[3][4][5