Living in Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago is an energy economy above all, and its fortunes have long risen and fallen with the oil and gas it pulls from the ground. Pay is about average for the world and you keep most of what you earn, yet living costs run high enough that a typical salary is mostly spoken for by the time the basics are covered, leaving little to build with. English is the common language, so talking your way through the day is easy, but that ease does not extend to hiring, and without a local connection the energy sector and most of what surrounds it stay hard to enter.

Trinidad and Tobago's diaspora heads overwhelmingly to one country: of about 323.6K living abroad, roughly 241.5K are in the United States, ahead of Canada, with Venezuela a distant third. That diaspora outnumbers the foreign-born population at home, and it has held essentially flat — 0% growth — over the past decade.