Living in Armenia

Armenia is best understood through its IT sector, which is where the door tends to open for someone arriving without local ties. Pay sits on the lower end, and the cost of everyday life is not low enough to offset it, so a salary mostly goes on the basics with little to set aside. Tax is light, but there is not much for it to spare. For technically minded newcomers it can still be a genuine entry point, even if the early years ask you to live close to what you earn.

Armenia's diaspora is doing something unusual — shrinking. The roughly 637.6K Armenians living abroad represent a 14% decline over the past decade, bucking the global trend of ever-growing diasporas. Most remain in the post-Soviet space, with 340.5K in Russia and another 116,600 in Azerbaijan. Even so, the country still sends out more people than it takes in, with about 259,000 foreign-born residents at home.