Living in Vanuatu

Vanuatu's draw is on the cost side, where everyday life runs cheaper than in most of the world and tax takes almost nothing from a salary. Pay itself is middling, but against those low costs it stretches, leaving a solid margin to work with. English reaches into some corners of working life but not all, so you'll often need Bislama or French to get by. As elsewhere in the islands, the job market is small, and arriving without contacts makes finding work the main challenge.

Vanuatu's diaspora has grown fast: the number of ni-Vanuatu living abroad has surged 160% over the past decade to about 15.2K, far outpacing a tiny foreign-born population of 2.4K. Most have settled in Australia (10.2K) and New Caledonia.