Living in Moldova

Moldova carries the tightest squeeze in this group, with pay toward the lower end of the world range while the cost of an everyday life runs higher than the pay would lead you to expect. The gap leaves little behind, since a salary tends to be spent by the time the essentials are covered. Hiring compounds the difficulty, resting on local experience and contacts an outsider has to build from scratch, and English carries only in scattered fields. It asks a good deal before it offers much in return.

Moldova is defined by emigration, with 864.3K people living abroad against a much smaller foreign-born population at home. The diaspora grew 16% over the past decade and spreads across Italy (218.6K), Russia, and Ukraine.