Living in Guyana

Guyana is in the grip of an energy boom, and it shows in who's hiring, with engineering, construction, and the energy sector drawing in outside talent as fast as projects come online. Pay has climbed to a high level, but costs have risen alongside it, and once an ordinary life is paid for there's little left to set aside. The boom keeps the door comparatively open to the skills it needs, and with English as the working language the bar for a newcomer is lower than most. It's a place to ride a wave rather than to bank a surplus.

Guyana's diaspora dwarfs its small population and clusters in one place above all: of its 469.6K emigrants, 314.8K live in the United States, ahead of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago. That diaspora has grown 9% over the past decade. The 53.2K foreign-born residents at home are drawn mostly from neighboring Venezuela.