Living in Tonga

Tonga sits in the middle band for pay, and the tax it asks is light, so most of a salary is yours to keep. Costs are middling too, but the margin left at month's end runs modest rather than generous, which makes this a place to live steadily more than one to build savings quickly. English opens some doors but not all of them, and outside the sectors where it's the working language you'll lean on Tongan. Work is scarce, and an outsider without connections should expect a slow road in.

Tonga is a country of emigration: its diaspora of about 53.2K is many times the tiny foreign-born population of under 1K, and it has grown 32% over the past decade. Tongans abroad cluster in the Pacific Rim, led by New Zealand (30K) and Australia, with Fiji a distant third.