Migration Contributes to 80% of Luxembourg Population Growth

The national statistical agency, STATEC, has published a report on immigration in Luxembourg.

The report unveiled that, over the past ten years, just over 80% of population growth in the Grand Duchy has been due to immigration. The migratory balance (difference between immigration and emigration) has proven to be an essential factor of demographic growth in Luxembourg. For several decades, Luxembourg's net migratory balance rate has on average greatly exceeded that of Europe as a whole. In 2018, this rate was 16.3 per thousand per year in Luxembourg, compared to 2.6 per thousand in the EU-27.

More specifically, French nationals made up 14.8% of immigrants in 2019, followed by Italian (9.2%) and Portuguese immigrants (8.9%). The number of immigrants of nationalities other than Portuguese, Italian, German, French or Belgian has also increased sharply over the years, especially from the 1980s on. The share of these other nationalities in the migratory balance went from 26.5% in 1990 to 70.5% in 2019.

According to STATEC, 72.2% of Luxembourg's immigrants are aged between 18 and 50. The majority of them come to Luxembourg for work or family reasons.

The net migration of Luxembourgers has been negative since 1999, which means that there are more Luxembourgers who emigrate to a foreign country than Luxembourgers who return to live in the Grand Duchy. Last year the balance was -1,067.