Rainer Muenz is an expert in demography and international migration as well as demographic ageing and its implications for labour markets and social security. During his career he has been working as an academic, in the private sector and as government adviser. He currently advises the European Commission’s DG Home on “Migration Foresight,” teaches at the Austrian Diplomatic Academy, and is a Senior Research Fellow associated with the Martens Centre for European Studies (Brussels).

Between 2015 and 2019 he was Adviser on Demography and Migration at the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), the in-house think tank advising European Commission President J.C. Juncker during his time in office. In 2020-21 he worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy.

Prior to joining the European Commission, Rainer Muenz was – between 2005 and 2015 – Head of Research and Development at Erste Group, a Central European retail bank headquartered in Vienna. He also worked as Senior Fellow at the European macroeconomic think tank Bruegel (Brussels), the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) and at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI, Washington DC).

Until 2004, Rainer Muenz had an academic career as researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1980-1992, and at the Department of Mathematics of Finance/ TU Vienna, 2002-2004, as well as a tenured university professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, 1993-2003. He also was visiting professor at the Universities of Bamberg, UC Berkeley, AU Cairo, Frankfurt/M., HU Jerusalem, Klagenfurt, St. Gallen (HSG), Vienna and Zurich.

In 2000-01, Rainer Muenz was a member of the German commission on immigration reform (Suessmuth commission). Between 2008 and 2010, he was a member of the high level “Reflection Group Horizon 2020-2030” of the European Council (Gonzales commission) on the future of Europe. Between 2015 and 2020, he served as chair of IOM’s Migration Advisory Board; and between 2013 and 2024 he was one of the co-chairs of KNOMAD, the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (a donor financed trust fund managed by the World Bank). He currently is a member of the Experts Council on Integration advising the Austrian government (since 2012).