The term "forced labour" only means work exacted by extra-economic coercion; it does not mean cases where a person was forced to take a job to survive as a result of social factors such as impoverishment. Forced labour in this sense mast also be distinguished from jobs for which the authorities were empowered to conscript German nationals on a temporary (war) basis but which, given the circumstances, do not qualify as forced labour.

In autumn 1944, the number of persons doing forced labour in Austria was probably around 700,000. Most of them were foreign nationals or came from territories occupied by Nazi Germany.

The living conditions of these workers depended largely on the Nazis' racial standards. Widely different rules in terms of police supervision, conditions of work and social services applied to them depending on their national origin, category and gender. The status attributed to them by the Nazis determined their rations, accommodation, working hours and pay. As soon as they were assigned to specific employers, their status underwent further differentiation by region - urban or rural -, industry and even individual company.

Even outside the concentration camp system, German and Austrian Jews were liable to compulsory labour. As a part of their systematic persecution which set in after the November pogroms, compulsory work assignments were introduced at first for jobless and indigent Jews, then for all Jewish people. These work assignments were organised by local work exchanges under the auspices of the Reich Employment Service.

From summer 1944 onwards, over 65,000 Jewish people from Hungary were deported to Austrian territory where they were employed as slave labourers. Many of them were assigned to work on the German "Südostwall", a last-ditch defence line in the Southeast. When the Soviet forces approached, these prisoners were forced to walk to Mauthausen and Gunskirchen in a number of death marches.

Most of the 200,000 concentration camp inmates in Austria were foreigners. They were imprisoned in Mauthausen and its subcamps. In the west of Austria, the were a number of smaller subcamps of the big Dachau camp. Depending on nationality and race, their working and living conditions differed. Not until 1942-43 did forced labour in concentration camps become more than a method to kill off prisoners: from then on, it was transformed into an efficient machinery to exploit the work potential of inmates in the interests of the German war economy, especially the building sector and maunfacturing industry.