The measurement of response burden began in 2001. Since then, Statistics Austria has successfully reduced the time Austrian enterprises spend completing questionnaires by 14.4 %, despite the addition of new surveys over the years. In 2025, 50 486 companies - out of approximately 513 991 - were required to respond to one or more surveys conducted by Statistics Austria, an increase of 565 compared to the previous year. Small businesses are largely exempt from reporting obligations due to cut-off thresholds, so the response burden is mainly concentrated among larger enterprises. Of all companies with reporting requirements, 54.7 % had to respond to only one survey, 27.4 % to two, and 17.9 % to three or more. In total, Austrian companies spent 737 285 hours completing Statistics Austria questionnaires in 2025, which is about 0.2 % higher than in 2024.
The response burden by industry shows a strong concentration in the areas of manufacturing and trade. These sectors are most affected by the reporting-intensive surveys Intrastat, the short term statistics survey, and the structural business statistics survey.