I'm no expert about eastern europe, so I will talk mostly about Italy, where I live and whose history I know but I hope it's not too different.

The Austrian empire was not an empire such as the british or french, because it was not based on the conquest of large areas of land and the complete destruction of previous forms of power. The austrian empire was not even austrian, it was the empire of the House of Habsburg, that starting in the 1100s in switzerland slowly built their power inside the holy roman empire and europe through marriages and wars. For instance Lombardy was gained following the death of the last spanish Habsburg and a war between the Bourbons of France and the Habsburg of Austria (war of spanish succession) to settle the division of the lands owned by the spanish side of the Habsburg, and the Habsurg ruled as legitimate rulers of the land due to dinastic and feudal law. This is quite different for instance by the situation of most of africa or india that was annexed following the dissolution of chartered companies that de facto ruled the land (such as the east india compnay for british india or the royal niger company for Nigeria).

So the lands they owned were ruled no differently from austria, with local nobles and cities that obeyed the Habsburg emperor as their liege and often had large privileges and immunities dictated by centuries of customs and negotiations between liege and vassal. The austrian ruled Lombardy no differently than austria, and often brought good innovations such as the creation of a moder cadastre in lombardy (an enormous work that took 40 years), navigable channels and a progressive reductions of feudal priviledges, especially clerical ones, that hampered growth and prosperity.

This system worked fairly well up until the french revolution, revolts were presents but they were generally caused by specific problems (like food scarcity or some tax considered too high): nothing too serious and nothing that questioned the austrian rule directly, such revolts happened all the time. Things changed with napoleon Italians for the first time in centuries experienced some level of self goverment, causing an increase in the hate against foreign rulers; due to the rising nationalism people started to feel that things could be better without austria. In particular people in lombardy and in the recently annexed veneto felt that taxes on italian goods were too high and kept that way too support austrian artisans against the superior italian goods; an important italian politicians of the time, Carlo Cattaneo, for instance justified the 1848 revolt saying that lombardy-veneto alone payed 1/3 of the taxes of the empire despite only housing 1/8 of the population. Following the increase in the activity of secret nationalistic organisations such as the "Carboneria" the austrian repression increased. Many intellectuals were arrested or sentenced to death or deported to the infamous, in italy, Spielberg prison in Brno, czech republic. This repression was hard but obviusly not at level seen in the colonies, for instance when the population of Milan stopped buying tobacco during the so called "smoke strike" the austrian autorities were not able to significantly repress the sitution.

So to sum up and answer your questions, as with all authoritarian states life in the regions under austrian control was not ideal, especially when the legitimacy of dinastic right as reason to control an area was questioned and the austrian regime did try to extract wealth from the area with heavy taxes but the population was not enslaved or mistread like in african or spanish colonies.