Living in Lithuania

Lithuania has drawn a growing cluster of finance and fintech work to sit alongside its IT and construction jobs, and those are the openings most within reach of a newcomer. The pay reads well at first, but tax takes a real bite on the way to your account, and once a typical life is paid for, the surplus is modest. It is enough to live on with some care, but not enough for much ease. English carries within the international firms, but step outside them and Lithuanian starts to matter.

Lithuania is shaped more by emigration than arrivals, with 459.3K people living abroad. The single largest community is in the United Kingdom (206.7K), well ahead of Norway and Ireland, and the diaspora grew 12% over the past decade.