Jamaica vs Puerto Rico vs the U.S. Virgin Islands: Who Actually Gets Paid More?

Everybody in Jamaica knows somebody who left. Not to New York or Toronto; those are the famous ones. I mean the quieter version: a nurse who took a contract in St. Thomas(USVI Island), a teacher who went to Grand Cayman, a cousin who "went over to Puerto Rico for a work thing" and then simply did not come back. When the topic comes up at a family gathering, the conversation always stops at the same place. Somebody says "the money over there better", everybody agrees, and then nobody says how much better🙃.

I now hold salary data for all three of these places in one database, which means I can finally finish that sentence with a number instead of a shrug. Two numbers, actually, because the raw figure and the figure adjusted for what a dollar buys tell different stories, and both of them are worth your time.

Note well: All salaries here are annual. This article was written on our data as at September 27, 2026, and Jamaican dollar conversions use the rate cached that day, about JMD $158 to USD $1. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands both use the US dollar, so nothing in those two columns is converted.

The short version: the typical Jamaican salary in our data works out to about USD $17,077 a year. In Puerto Rico, it is USD $59,310. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, it is USD $63,820. The single worst comparison in the whole database is Registered Nurse. Jamaica: JMD $2,748,000, roughly USD $17,380. U.S. Virgin Islands: USD $84,120. Same job, same sea, one connecting flight apart.

Note well, and this one matters more than the exchange rate: the three sets of figures were not collected the same way. Jamaica is 514 reports from actual people and published pay scales, covering 180 employers. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are US Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational wage surveys, which ask employers, not workers. That difference is not a footnote, and I come back to it properly further down, because it cuts in a direction most people would not guess.

How Much Does The Typical Person Earn In Each Place?

Here is the whole distribution, side by side, everything converted to US dollars so the columns mean the same thing:

Read the bottom row against the Virgin Islands column, second row. Nine out of ten Jamaican salaries in this database fall below USD $43,200. One in four Virgin Islands figures falls below USD $52,000. Which means the Jamaican 90th percentile sits underneath the Virgin Islands 25th percentile, with room to spare.

Three quarters(3/4) of the Jamaican reports sit below USD $27,196. The worst paid occupation in the whole of Puerto Rico, Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, is at USD $25,730. So the Puerto Rican floor and the Jamaican upper quarter are in roughly the same place🤯.

In Jamaican dollars, for anyone who thinks in JMD rather than USD, the median is JMD $2,640,000, the 25th percentile is JMD $1,500,000, and the 75th is JMD $4,300,000. The Puerto Rican median of USD $59,310 is JMD $9,377,000. The Virgin Islands median of USD $63,820 is JMD $10,091,000.

Almost nobody in the Jamaican data earns JMD $10,000,000. It is the number that shows up at the very top of the local tech market, a handful of bank technology posts. In the Virgin Islands, it is the middle💰.

Where Does The Legal Minimum Wage Sit In Each Place?

This is the comparison I kept coming back to, because it removes every argument about sample bias. Minimum wages are law, not survey data.

Puerto Rico got there under Act 47-2021, which stepped the local minimum from USD $8.50 to USD $9.50 and then to USD $10.50, well above the USD $7.25 federal floor that still technically applies. The Virgin Islands have been at USD $10.50 since 2018. Jamaica's national minimum wage went to JMD $17,000 a week in 2026, up from JMD $16,000.

Now put that beside the previous section. The Jamaican median in our data is USD $17,077. The legal minimum wage in either US territory, worked full time all year, is USD $21,840. The middle of our Jamaican sample earns less than the least a Puerto Rican or Virgin Islands employer is allowed to pay.

I have written a lot of salary comparisons on this site, and that is the most brutal single sentence any of them has produced.

What Does The Same Job Pay In All Three Places?

Averages across a whole territory hide too much, so here are like for like occupations. Where Jamaica reports the job under a different name, I have used the closest match and stated as such.

Registered Nurse

- Jamaica: JMD $2,748,000, about USD $17,380 (3 reports)

- Puerto Rico: USD $39,880

- U.S. Virgin Islands: USD $84,120

Pharmacist

- Jamaica: JMD $3,120,000, about USD $19,733 (2 reports)

- Puerto Rico: USD $111,270

- U.S. Virgin Islands: USD $134,970

Customer service, front line

- Jamaica: JMD $1,308,000, about USD $8,273 (Customer Care Representative, 2 reports)

- Puerto Rico: USD $26,700

- U.S. Virgin Islands: USD $37,140

Administrative and secretarial

- Jamaica: JMD $1,494,176, about USD $9,450 (Administrative Assistant, 6 reports)

- Puerto Rico: USD $25,730

- U.S. Virgin Islands: USD $44,040

Software and computing

- Jamaica: JMD $4,300,000, about USD $27,196 (Software Engineer, 22 reports)

- Puerto Rico: USD $60,470 (Computer Occupations, All Other)

- U.S. Virgin Islands: USD $96,180 (Computer Occupations, All Other)

Five occupations, five times Jamaica is third, and in four of the five the Jamaican figure does not reach half of the Puerto Rican one. The pharmacist row is the widest: a Jamaican pharmacist in our data earns about a sixth of a Virgin Islands pharmacist. Nothing in this table has Jamaica winning, and I double-checked 🙃.

Note well: the nurse and pharmacist rows are three reports and two reports. That is people, not a market rate. I am showing you the number because it is what I hold, and it points in the same direction as everything else on this page, not because two pharmacists settle anything. If you are a Jamaican pharmacist and that figure is wrong, the fix is at the bottom of this article.

Why Is The Jamaican Column So Far Below The Other Two?

Three reasons, and only one of them is about Jamaica.

The first is the currency, and it is doing most of the work. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are US territories. They pay in US dollars; they sit above the federal minimum wage rather than anywhere near it, and their wages are set in the same money the comparison is being made in. Jamaica pays in Jamaican dollars, and I am dividing every figure by 158 to put it on the same axis. A nurse in Kingston who gets a raise next year gets no closer to that Virgin Islands figure unless the raise beats the exchange rate.

The second is the shape of the economies. Puerto Rico's top ten are Physicians at USD $172,230, Industrial Production Managers at USD $129,740, Family Medicine Physicians, Pharmacists, Dentists. That is a pharmaceutical and medical manufacturing economy showing up in the wage data. The Virgin Islands top ten is Pharmacists, Chief Executives, health services managers and Registered Nurses. Neither list looks like the Jamaican one, which is technology roles and bank posts almost the whole way down.

The third is the one I have to be straightest about: how the numbers were gathered. The Jamaican figures are individual reports submitted to a salary website, which means they lean toward people who look up salary websites, and in practice that means tech, finance, and young professionals. The Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands figures are government employer surveys covering whole occupations, including everybody quiet and everybody senior.

Here is the thing, though. You would expect that bias to flatter Jamaica, because a self selecting tech heavy sample should read high, not low. Our Jamaican sample is skewed toward the best paid corner of the local economy, and it still lands at USD $17,077. Whatever the true national figure is, it is not above that one.

What Happens When You Adjust For What Things Actually Cost?

Everything above compares money. It does not compare what the money does, and a Virgin Islands dollar and a Jamaican dollar do not do the same amount of work. Rent in St. Thomas(USVI) is not rent in Portmore, and an island that imports its food and its electricity charges you for both.

So here is a model. It is a model, not a measurement, and I want to be exact about how it is built:

- Jamaican figures are divided by JMD $80 to the international dollar, which is roughly the purchasing power conversion factor the World Bank publishes for Jamaica, rather than the JMD $158 market exchange rate. Jamaican prices are a little over half US prices on average, so a Jamaican dollar buys close to twice what the exchange rate suggests.

- Puerto Rico is treated as parity with the US mainland. Housing runs cheaper than the mainland average and electricity and groceries run dearer, and the two roughly cancel.

- The Virgin Islands are divided by 1.25, on the widely reported finding that the territory runs 20 to 30 percent above mainland US prices. I used the bottom of that range on purpose, because I would rather understate this than overstate it.

Every figure below is therefore "what this salary would feel like in a mainland US town", and every figure below is a model:

Two things happen at once, and they pull in opposite directions.

The Virgin Islands loses its lead. On money, it is the best paid of the three. On what the money buys, Puerto Rico moves ahead of it by roughly USD $8,000 a year. That is the entire nominal gap wiped out and then reversed, which is why I would not pick between those two territories on the salary alone.

Jamaica's gap halves, and is still a gap. USD $17,077 against USD $59,310 is 3.5 times. USD $33,000 against USD $59,310 is 1.8 times. The cheap cost base is real, and it does real work, and it closes about half of the distance. It does not close the other half.

Run the same adjustment down the like for like rows, and the pattern holds:

The nurse row is the interesting one. Adjusted, a Jamaican nurse and a Puerto Rican nurse are within USD $5,500 of each other, which is the closest Jamaica gets to anybody on this page. The Virgin Islands nurse is still on nearly double both of them, and that survives any adjustment factor you care to argue for.

The minimum wage comparison survives it too. Adjusted, Jamaica's annualised minimum is about USD $10,400 against Puerto Rico's USD $21,840 and the Virgin Islands' USD $17,500. Still less than half of either one.

Note well: this section is arithmetic on published price level estimates, not on CaribSalaries data. We hold salaries. We do not hold rent, groceries, utilities, school fees, or the cost of flying home at Christmas. Change my 1.25 to 1.30, and the Virgin Islands drops further. Change my JMD $80 to JMD $90, and Jamaica drops. The direction of every conclusion in this section holds across any reasonable choice, which is the only reason I am comfortable publishing it.

Who Is Actually Worth Moving For?

If you strip it down to occupations where I can put all three next to each other, the ranking is uncomfortable and consistent.

The Virgin Islands wins the middle of the market outright on money. Against Puerto Rico, on the same currency and the same wage floor, it pays a Registered Nurse 2.11 times more, an Insurance Sales Agent 1.73 times more, a Secretary 1.71 times more, and a computer specialist 1.59 times more. It loses only three of the twenty-six shared occupations, and two of those three are close enough to be noise: Computer and Information Systems Managers, USD $87,900 against Puerto Rico's USD $99,780; then Computer Systems Analysts at USD $59,430 against USD $63,730; then Human Resources Managers at USD $77,490 against USD $78,370, which is a rounding error.

Then you adjust for prices, and most of that advantage goes to the landlord and the power company. Twenty-three wins out of twenty-six becomes a much shorter list, and the median flips to Puerto Rico. The occupations where the Virgin Islands still win clearly after adjustment are the ones where its lead was enormous to begin with, and nursing is the clearest of them.

Puerto Rico wins the top of the market in medicine either way. Physicians at USD $172,230 are the highest occupational figure in either US territory, and nothing in the Virgin Islands data comes near it.

Jamaica wins on one thing that does not appear in any of these tables: a foreign company paying US dollar money into a Jamaican cost base. Intellibus pays JMD $10,794,000, roughly USD $68,269, to a Data Engineer, a ReactJS Developer, and a Java Consultant, in Kingston. On money that beats both territory medians. Adjusted for what it buys in Jamaica, it is around USD $135,000, which beats every single occupational figure I hold for Puerto Rico and all but one for the Virgin Islands. There are not many of those jobs. There are more jobs like the Intellibus ones locally, so other Jamaicans are earning that amount.

What Is Happening Right Now That This Data Cannot See?

Two things, and both of them will move these figures.

The Virgin Islands is about to repay its government workers. On 20 April 2026, Governor Albert Bryan Jr. signed Executive Order No. 545-2026, which moves non-union classified government employees onto a new General Schedule pay plan, replacing the one in place since 2020. It takes effect on 1 October 2026, which is four days after this article. My most recent Virgin Islands survey year is 2025. So the government column of that territory is about to change, and this page will not know about it until the next survey lands.

Jamaica has just come out the other side of its own restructuring. The public sector compensation review that ran from 2022 through 2025 reset the scales for teachers, nurses, police, and the civil service, paid out in tranches, with double-digit percentage increases at most rungs. That is a real raise, and the people who got it felt it. It is also a raise in a currency that is not the one the Virgin Islands pays in, which is exactly the trap in the currency section above. A quarter added to a Jamaican salary in Jamaican dollars does not move the Jamaican column on this page by anything like a quarter.

The honest version of both paragraphs: the gap in this article is wide enough that no single pay reform on either side closes it.

What Should You Actually Do With This?

Migrating is a much more complicated topic than people realise. Individuals migrate for all sorts of reasons, not just monetary. You may read this and say, 'Well, the USVI has the highest salaries, so I should just go there'. It's not that simple. The culture of where you live is important, community is important, entertainment is important, and this list goes on. It is best to stop and think about what is most important to you. There are people who migrate and end up richer but miserable, and there are others who migrate and end up happy. Weigh all the pros and cons.

How I Calculated These Figures?

Every salary here comes out of the CaribSalaries database and nowhere else. The cost of living adjustment does not, and I have separated the two below.

- Jamaica: 514 approved reports, 180 employers, 326 distinct roles. These are salaries submitted by individuals plus published statutory scales. Amounts are stored in the currency they were submitted in, almost all Jamaican dollars, and converted at display time.

- Puerto Rico: 132 approved figures, 44 occupations, three survey years. Source is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for Puerto Rico, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

- U.S. Virgin Islands: 81 approved figures, 28 occupations, the same three survey years, same source.

- Every "employer" in the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands data is a survey year, not a company. There is no employer ranking for either territory, and there will not be one until people who work there submit their own figures.

- Where I quote a territory-wide percentile, I convert every figure to US dollars first at the rate cached on 27 September 2026, then take the percentile. Jamaican figures submitted in US dollars are left alone.

- Where I quote a single occupation for Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, it is the 2025 survey year. The Jamaican figure beside it is the median of all reports we hold for that role, with the count shown.

- The salary figures are not modelled, estimated, or filled in. Nothing on this page is interpolated, and no occupation appears unless I hold a real figure for it.

- The adjusted figures are modelled, and only the adjusted figures. They are the salary divided by a single price level factor per territory: JMD $80 to the international dollar for Jamaica, 1.00 for Puerto Rico, 1.25 for the U.S. Virgin Islands. Those factors come from published purchasing power and price level estimates, not from our database, and I have stated all three in the section itself so you can substitute your own. Every adjusted number is rounded and prefixed with "about" for that reason.

- Minimum wage rates are statutory, not survey data: Puerto Rico under Act 47-2021, the Virgin Islands under its own minimum wage legislation, Jamaica under the national minimum wage order. Annualised at 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, which is an arithmetic convention and not a claim about anybody's actual hours.

- Executive Order 545-2026 and the Jamaican public sector compensation review are context, not CaribSalaries data, and are sourced to the Government of the Virgin Islands' publication of the order and to the Jamaican Ministry of Finance.

If an occupation is not on this page, it is not in the data I hold for all three places.

For deeper analysis of the data, you can check out our Insight Reports on the countries in this article: https://caribsalaries.com/insights. We are currently running a 10% discount on all reports. If you sign up for an account, you also get an interactive dashboard with charts that can be explored for each report purchase.

Spread The Word

The weakest column in this article is not Jamaica. It is Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where I have 213 government survey figures and not one salary from an actual person. No employer table, no named company, nobody's real offer letter.

If you work in either territory, you can fix that yourself: https://caribsalaries.com/submit. Three minutes, anonymous, no sign-up.

And if you are Jamaican and you looked at that USD $17,077 and thought it does not describe you, you are probably right, and the reason is that not enough people like you have submitted. Add yours.

Share this with the person in your family who keeps saying the money over there is better. Now there is a number attached to it, and a second number for what it actually buys.