Working in Austria without German

Austria is not Germany with different mountains. The permits, the pay and the payslip all work differently. This page is the short version.

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change, and your own case may have details this page cannot know about. The official source is migration.gv.at, run by the Austrian government, and the Austrian embassy or consulate in your country is the place to confirm anything before you act on it.^[1]

First question: which group are you in?

EU, EEA or Swiss citizens

You need no visa and no work permit. You can move, take a job and start.^[2][3]

Two pieces of paperwork do apply, and the second one has no German equivalent:

• The Meldezettel — registering your address, within three days of moving in.^[4] Germany gives you two weeks; Austria gives you three days.^[5] It is free, and the person you rent from has to co-sign the form.^[4]
• The Anmeldebescheinigung — a registration certificate, needed if you are staying longer than three months, applied for within four months of arriving.^[6] Germany abolished its version of this years ago, so a guide written about Germany will not mention it at all.^[7]

Everyone else

You need a residence title that allows work, and Austria's main one is the Rot-Weiß-Rot – Karte, the Red-White-Red Card. It is scored on points.^[8]

The Red-White-Red Card

There are seven ways in.^[9] The five below are the ones most readers of this site will look at; four of them are scored, the fifth is not. (The other two are for self-employed key workers and regular seasonal workers.)

Points come from your qualifications, your work experience, your age and your language skills — and English counts.^[12][13] German is not required to score the language points. That single fact is why this page exists.

The card is issued for up to 24 months.^[13][10]

What each route asks for in money

• Other Key Worker — at least €3,465 gross a month, plus the special payments described below.^[8] The figure is half the social-insurance ceiling and it moves every January;^[14][15] it was €3,225 in 2025.^[16]
• Very Highly Qualified and Shortage Occupation — no absolute figure. You must be paid the minimum in the collective agreement for that job, which is a real floor but a different one for every sector.^[8]
• Graduate — no set figure either: the pay has to match what a comparable Austrian graduate would be offered.^[11]
• Start-up Founder — €30,000 capital, at least half of it your own.^[10]

The EU Blue Card

The other main route, and the one most people with a degree will look at first.

For 2026 the salary line is €55,678 gross a year including the special payments.^[17] That number is not arbitrary: it is set at the average annual gross salary of full-time employees in Austria and is raised each January.^[17][16] It was €51,500 in 2025.^[16]

The shortage occupation list

A yearly regulation — the Fachkräfteverordnung. For 2026 it names 64 occupations nationwide, and eight of the nine federal states have a regional list on top of that. Vienna has no regional list. A regional occupation only helps you if the job offer is in that state.^[18]

The list leans heavily on engineering and technical roles, the building and metal trades, and healthcare.^[19]

A warning that matters more here than anywhere else on this page: healthcare is on the shortage list, and healthcare is also a field where Austria requires German by law — B1 for nursing assistants, B2 for registered nurses and the medical-technical professions, C1 for speech therapists, proved with a real certificate.^[20] Being on the shortage list makes the visa easier. It does not make the job reachable without German.

The jobseeker visa

Austria has one, and it is much narrower than people expect. It is open only to the Very Highly Qualified group — so you must already score 70 of 100 before you can apply.^[12] It lasts up to six months, it does not let you work, and if you do not find a job you have to leave and wait a year before applying again.^[21][22]

The Red-White-Red Card plus

After two years on a Red-White-Red Card — having worked in a qualifying job for 21 of the last 24 months — you can move to the card plus, which gives unrestricted access to the labour market: any employer, any job, self-employment. Family members of card and Blue Card holders get it too.^[23]

Pay: the part that surprises everyone

There is no minimum wage

Austria has no statutory minimum wage at all. Instead, more than 800 collective agreements — Kollektivverträge — set a minimum for each sector, and they cover about 95% of employees. The Social Ministry's own figure is that most of them set at least about €1,700 gross a month, paid fourteen times a year; that figure was last published in 2025, so treat it as the shape of the floor rather than today's exact number.^[24]

Salaries are quoted fourteen times a year

Collective agreements as a rule provide a 13th and a 14th salary — holiday pay, usually in June or July, and Christmas pay, usually in November or December. They are not statutory; they come from the agreement,^[25] and they are so nearly universal that Austrian pay is simply quoted 14×.^[24]

So a monthly figure in an Austrian advert is one fourteenth of the year, not one twelfth. €3,500 a month in Vienna is €49,000 a year. €3,500 a month in Munich is €42,000. Comparing the two as if they were the same number is the commonest mistake a reader moving from Germany makes.

And the two extra salaries are taxed gently: the first €620 a year is tax-free and the bulk of the rest is taxed at 6%, not at your marginal rate. Social insurance is still due on them.^[26][15]

The advert has to print the minimum — and that changes how you read it

Austrian law (§ 9 of the Equal Treatment Act) requires every job advert to state the collective-agreement or statutory minimum pay for that position, and to say so if the employer is willing to pay more.^[27][28]

This is why Austrian adverts carry a line like "KV-Mindestgehalt € 3.200, Bereitschaft zur Überzahlung". That number is the legal floor, not the offer. It is not the employer being stingy — it is the employer obeying the law. Read it as the bottom of a range and negotiate.

The same law forbids adverts addressed to one sex.^[27] That is one of the things this site checks before a listing goes up.

What comes off your payslip

The employee's share of social insurance is 18.07% of gross in 2026, up to a ceiling of €6,930 a month (a little less on low pay, where the unemployment share is reduced):^[29][15]

That last line has no German equivalent. Membership of the Arbeiterkammer is compulsory and comes off every payslip — in return it is the body that gives its members advice and support on employment law, and it publishes information in English.^[30]

Income tax on top of that is banded, starting at 0% up to €13,539 and rising through 20%, 30%, 40%, 48% and 50% (55% above €1 million). The band limits — all but that top one — rose by 1.73% in January 2026.^[31]

There are no tax classes of the German kind: the same scale applies to everyone.^[31]

The contract

Two of those are better than the German statutory minimum — five weeks' leave rather than four, and a probation period capped at one month rather than up to six.^[38][39] The quarter-end notice date is the one that catches people out: if your employer gives you notice on 2 October, you may be working until 31 December.^[33]

Arriving

1. Meldezettel within three days of moving in, at the registration office of your municipality. Free.^[4]
2. EU citizens: Anmeldebescheinigung within four months. Separate from the Meldezettel, and additional to it.^[6]
3. Health insurance is not something you arrange. Your employer must register you with the ÖGK before your first day;^[40] cover starts from the day you actually start work.^[41] You then get an e-card; its yearly service fee is deducted from your pay each November — €26.85 for 2027.^[42]
4. Wage tax is deducted by the employer.^[43] The annual return is usually optional, often produces a refund, and in simple cases arrives automatically without you filing anything.^[44][45]

Working in English

Austria scores very highly on English in the international rankings,^[46] and Vienna is the centre of it — home to a United Nations office, with the IAEA, UNODC, OPEC and the OSCE all based in the city.^[47][48][49]

We will not give you a percentage of Austrian job adverts written in English, because nobody publishes a reliable one. What we can tell you is what is on this site: every Austrian listing here is an advert written in English that does not ask for German.^[50] The Austria page is all of them.

Where German is genuinely required: the federal public service asks for it as part of the professional qualification,^[51] the regulated health professions require a certificate at B1 to C1,^[20] and in anything public-facing — retail, care, hospitality — expect to need German.

Where to check before you act

• migration.gv.at — the Austrian government's own migration portal, in English.
• oesterreich.gv.at — the official guide to living in Austria, including registration.
• arbeiterkammer.at — the Chamber of Labour, for anything about your contract or your pay.
• gesundheitskasse.at — the ÖGK, for health insurance.
• The Austrian embassy or consulate in your country, for the visa itself.

Figures on this page were checked on 23 September 2026 against the sources below. Salary thresholds, the shortage occupation list and the tax bands are all revised every January — always confirm the current number before applying.