Living in the Bahamas

Pay here ranks with the best anywhere, and with no tax on earnings, almost all of it stays in your pocket. Living costs run just as high, yet the pay still outpaces them, leaving real room to save, a rare pairing at this end of the scale. The harder part is getting in, since a small economy built around hospitality and tourism doesn't open its doors quickly to someone without local footing. English is spoken everywhere at work, so for all the difficulty of getting hired, the language is never part of it.

The Bahamas is a net destination, and the inflow has a clear center of gravity. About 66.1K residents — 16% of the population — were born abroad, with Haiti the dominant origin at 31.4K, ahead of the United States and Jamaica. The foreign-born population has grown 13% over the decade, far outpacing a Bahamian diaspora of only about 2,200 abroad.