Living in Indonesia

A salary in Indonesia tends to go entirely on the essentials. Pay is low by world standards, and while tax barely registers and living costs are low, there is little to set aside while you're there. The surer ways in run through IT, energy, and the tourism and hospitality trade, where companies hire internationally and English reaches further. Outside those, breaking in without a local network is hard, and the money is better understood as a way to live in the country than to build savings in it.

Indonesia sends far more people abroad than it takes in, with a diaspora of about 3.7M that has grown 15% over the past decade. Most are labor migrants in nearby Malaysia (1.8M), with smaller communities in the UAE and Taiwan. Against a population of 283.5M, the 418.7K foreign-born residents at home are well under 1%.