Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

The number of people employed in R&D has 
risen sharply over the past ten years.
Whilst 
89,500 people (53,300 FTEs) worked in R&D in 
2007, by 2017 this had risen to 
131,000
(76,000 
FTEs). This is a 43% increase in headcount in FTE 
terms. The proportion of women working in R&D 
rose slightly from 2007 to 2017. The 
proportion of 
female R&D employees compared to the total
in-
creased from 23.7% to 24.2% (in FTE terms), putting 
Austria’s figure below that for most OECD coun-
tries. Women currently make up 36.4% of research-
ers in the higher education sector and 35.8% of 
those in the public sector. In percentage terms, 
therefore, these two sectors employ many more fe-
male researchers than the business enterprise sec-
tor, where the share is still a modest 16.1% despite 
a marked rise of 20.7%.
Austria’s position in international 
comparisons
Austria is one of the 
world’s leading nations
for its 
expenditure on research and development
. A re-
search intensity (percentage of gross domestic ex-
penditure on R&D relative to gross domestic product) 
of 3.17% in 2018 puts Austria second in Europe behind 
Sweden and ahead of leading innovators such as Fin-
land, Belgium and the USA. Together with Sweden, 
Germany and Denmark, Austria is one of only four EU 
countries to have met the European target of 3%. 
The country enjoys an 
upper midfield
position in 
terms of its 
research and development perfor-
mance
, which is measured against core quality-ori-
ented parameters such as citation rate and interna-
tional patent applications. Austria has not yet man-
aged to break into the group of “Innovation 
Leaders” and has been amongst the top few “Strong 
Innovators” for several years now.