Living in Greece

Greece offers a familiar Mediterranean trade-off. Pay that reads respectably on paper thins out once everyday costs are met, leaving little to set aside. For a newcomer the realistic way in runs almost entirely through hospitality and tourism, work that swells through summer and empties by winter. Finding a foothold from outside is genuinely hard, since hiring leans on people already known and English carries less weight away from the tourist coast.

Greece is a destination country, home to about 1.4M foreign-born residents — roughly 14% of the population — a community that has grown 15% over the past decade. The largest single group by far comes from neighboring Albania (474.4K), ahead of Germany and Georgia. Its own diaspora of 780.1K is smaller and centered on Germany, the US, and Australia.