Living in Myanmar

Pay in Myanmar sits near the bottom of the world, though tax is light enough that you keep nearly all of it. English carries within a few sectors but fades quickly beyond them, and for someone without local roots, hiring is hard and the openings narrow. It is a market that asks a great deal of a newcomer before it offers much in return.

Myanmar's diaspora has expanded sharply — up 72% over the past decade, to 4.3M, the 16th-largest in the world. Those emigrants concentrate in neighboring Thailand (1.7M) and Bangladesh (1.2M), patterns that reflect displacement as much as labor migration.