Some Interesting Facts About Luxembourg

Because of its limited geographical size, Luxembourg is sometimes perceived as a micro state similar to Liechtenstein. Yet while Luxembourg is indeed small, it is not that small. Luxembourg is with its more than 500,000 people roughly 14 times greater than Liechtenstein. It is also a lot greater in terms of population than Iceland with its 320,000 people.

Luxembourg has many unusual characteristics.

It has a work force of 229,000 people-yet employment is 352,000. This is possible because 136,000 more people live in neighboring countries and work in Luxembourg than vice versa.

Of the people who do live in Luxembourg, some 43% are foreigners. Of those foreigners 86% comes from other EU countries. For some unknown reason, Portugal is the by far biggest country of origin. One explanation for this could be Portugal's relatively low income, yet there are few immigrants in Luxembourg from other low income EU countries like Greece.

Exports are 160% of GDP, something which is possible because most input is imported.

Luxembourg has the by far highest per capita GDP in the EU, at €75,000 or $100,000, more than twice as high as in the United States and neighboring Germany, Belgium and France.

Because of this, Luxembourg's GDP is larger than that of many countries with larger populations, including  Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia.

However, because Luxembourg has a net factor income deficit with abroad (largely related to the high number of workers living abroad) constituting 31.5% of GDP, GNP per capita is a lower €51,500 or $68,500. That is however still far higher than all other EU countries as well as the U.S. and all other OECD countries except for Norway.

All of these facts, and more, can be found here.