Austria had a population of 7,795,786. The 2001 estimated population was 8,150,835, giving the country an overall population density of 97 persons per sq km (252 per sq mi). Some 65 percent of the population is urban, with more than one-quarter of the people living in the five largest cities: Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, and Innsbruck. The Austrian people are German-speaking, but the country has a varied ethnic mixture—a legacy from the time of the multinational Habsburg Austria. About 99 percent of the population is ethnic Austrian. Minority groups include Croats and Hungarians.

The German spoken in Austria, except in the west, is technically a subdialect of the major Bavarian dialect, of which Tirolean is a separate subdialect. Characteristic of Austrian German is the dialect of Vienna, which has overtones of Bavarian but is perhaps softer and more lilting and melodious than the speech of, say, Munich. The speech of Kärnten and Steiermark, areas that are largely separated from the rest of the country by mountain ranges, is clearly distinguishable from that of the west and northeast. The inhabitants of the Vorarlberg and parts of western Tirol are Alemannic in origin, with cultural and dialectal affinities with the German Swiss to the west and Swabians in Germany to the north.