"Austria needs an additional 1,500-2,000 police officers immediately," Mikl-Leitner said, as quoted by the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung on Thursday.
According to the Interior Ministry, Austrian police officers dealing with the refugee influx have been overworked in recent weeks, and in the coming year the situation is not expected to get any better.
Austria has a 28,000-strong police force, the media outlet reported. Police officers clocked up some 190,000 hours in overtime in the effort to cope with the influx of refugees.
Europe is suffering from a major refugee crisis, with over 710,000 migrants having arrived in the European Union during the first nine months of 2015, according to the EU border agency Frontex.
The migrants are leaving conflict-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East, including Syria, in search of a better life in wealthy EU countries, such as Germany and Austria.