Bermuda has long been called one of the most beautiful places on earth. But beauty has a price — and for growing numbers of Bermudians, that price is simply too high.

Walk into any supermarket in Hamilton on a Tuesday afternoon and you will see it in the shopping trolleys. The modest baskets. The careful comparison of price tags. The quiet decision to put something back on the shelf. These are not the gestures of tourists — they are the daily calculations of ordinary Bermudians trying to live with dignity in a place where the groceries alone can cost twice what they would anywhere else in the world:

+226% Cost of living above global median

+357% Rent above global median

$13,786 Estimated monthly cost for a family of four

78% of emigrants cite cost as the No 1 reason for leaving

Bermuda is, by any objective global measure, one of the most expensive places on earth to live. Overall living costs sit 226 per cent above the global median. Average rent is 357 per cent above the global median. A litre of milk costs $5.10. A kilo of chicken costs $22.91. A loaf of bread runs $8.72. Eggs — 12 of them — cost $8.18 (CityCost.org, 2026). These are not luxury items. These are the building blocks of a family's weekly shop, and they cost, on average, more than twice what they would cost in the United States or Britain.

This is not news to anyone who lives here. But it deserves to be said clearly, and repeatedly, because the consequences of these prices are not abstract economic statistics. They are lived experiences — of families stretched to breaking point, of young professionals who love this island but cannot see a future here, of seniors who worked all their lives and still cannot retire comfortably in the place they call home. The cost of living in Bermuda is not merely an inconvenience. It is a social crisis. And it is one that our community has been too slow to confront.

The numbers tell a difficult story

Let us be precise about what we are dealing with. A family of four in Bermuda face average monthly expenditures of approximately $13,687 — including rent, food, healthcare, transport, education and utilities (LivingCostIndex.com, 2025). For comfortable living, that figure rises to $23,173. The average monthly salary stands at $7,500 (Wikipedia/Economy of Bermuda, 2025). Do that arithmetic and you immediately understand why so many families feel perpetually behind; even the average salary does not comfortably cover the average cost of living for a single person in this territory, let alone a family.

The composition of that household budget is itself a story. Rent alone consumes approximately 45 per cent of a family's monthly expenditure in Bermuda — a figure that dwarfs the 28–30 per cent threshold that housing economists consider the maximum sustainable proportion of household income (JBM Realty, 2026; LivingCostIndex.com, 2025). One-bedroom apartments in Hamilton's city centre average $3,600 a month (CityCost.org, 2026). Modest three-bedroom homes begin at $800,000 to $1.2 million for purchase — placing homeownership entirely beyond the reach of most working Bermudian families without substantial family assistance or exceptional earnings (JBM Realty, 2026).

Food prices compound the housing burden. Grocery costs run approximately 185 per cent higher than in the United States — a country that is itself not cheap by global standards (Numbeo, 2026). The structural reason is well understood: Bermuda produces almost no foodstuffs domestically, is entirely dependent on imports — predominantly from the United States — and levies import duties averaging 36 per cent on virtually all goods, including some food (Bermuda-Attractions.com, 2023). There is a sugar tax, a food preparation tax, duty on some meats, fish, fruit and vegetables, although some essential foodstuffs now carry no tariff.

Still, import duty is the Government's second-largest revenue source. Many everyday purchases still carry the full weight of that fiscal architecture — and it is ordinary families, not corporations, who pay it at the checkout.

The human cost: who bears the burden?

High prices do not fall equally on everyone. In Bermuda — as in every society — they fall hardest on those who can least afford them. This is the moral and social dimension of the cost-of-living crisis that too often gets buried beneath macroeconomic analysis.

Working families at the lower end of the wage distribution face the sharpest squeeze. Bermuda's fiscal structure — heavily reliant on import duties and payroll taxes — is regressive in its impact: it extracts a disproportionately larger share of income from lower earners than from higher earners.

The Royal Gazette has documented what economist Robert Stubbs, formerly of the Bank of Bermuda, described as Bermuda's "extreme income inequality, severe tax regressivity and exorbitant cost of living" — a combination that creates, in his words, "the perfect cocktail for widespread economic deprivation and poverty" (The Royal Gazette, 2018). There is little in the intervening years that suggests this cocktail has been diluted.

For senior citizens, the picture is particularly stark. Many Bermudians who worked their entire lives on this island find that retirement on a fixed income is not economically viable in their own country. Healthcare insurance costs at least $300 to $600 a month per adult — and that is before any point-of-care expenses (JBM Realty, 2026). Property taxes, food costs and utilities do not diminish with age. The result is that retirement in Bermuda has become, for many, an aspiration that reality forecloses.

Young professionals face a different but equally demoralising version of the same problem. They earn salaries that would make them comfortable in Toronto, London or Atlanta — but that leave them unable to save for a home, start a family without financial anxiety or build the kind of long-term security that previous generations took for granted. Many of them are choosing to leave. And who can blame them? The question is not whether we can fault them for going. The question is what we are doing to make them stay.

The January 2025 Emigration Survey Report, released by the Government of Bermuda, makes for uncomfortable reading. It documents a pattern of emigration driven overwhelmingly by economic factors: 78 per cent of respondents cited the high cost of living as a primary reason for leaving; 65 per cent cited housing unaffordability; 52 per cent cited limited employment opportunities (Government of Bermuda, 2025). The survey found that respondents reported "significantly higher satisfaction with life overseas, particularly in areas such as the cost of living, healthcare affordability, access to social activities and overall life satisfaction“.

Read that again. Bermudians who have left their home — left their families, their culture, their beaches, the smell of oleander in spring — are nonetheless significantly more satisfied with their lives. That is not just a personal tragedy. It is a systemic indictment of the economic conditions we have allowed to take root here.

The Government's own Retaining the Local Workforce Position Paper 2024 acknowledged the confluence of a declining birthrate, an ageing population and increasing emigration of the local population — a demographic triple threat that, if unchecked, will fundamentally alter the social and economic character of this island (Government of Bermuda, 2025).

Bermuda's population stood at approximately 63,805 in mid-2025 (Economy of Bermuda, Wikipedia, 2025). It is already one of the smallest national communities in the world. It cannot afford to lose its working-age population to economic exile — not without severe long-term consequences for community vitality, institutional capacity and cultural continuity.

The survey asked respondents what might have prevented emigration. The answers were not complicated: a more manageable cost of living, increased job opportunities, improved public and post-secondary education, and initiatives to make Bermuda a more vibrant and appealing place to live. These are not radical demands. They are the basic conditions of a functioning, humane economy. They are achievable. But they require political will, structural honesty and a willingness to prioritise the wellbeing of ordinary Bermudians over other interests.

The structural roots of the problem

It would be dishonest to pretend that the causes of Bermuda's high cost of living are simple, or that solutions are obvious. The island faces genuine geographic and structural constraints that distinguish it from most comparable economies. It is 21 square miles of mid-Atlantic rock, with no agricultural capacity worth speaking of, no domestic energy production, and a complete dependence on maritime supply chains for virtually every physical good it consumes. These are real constraints.

But structural constraints do not fully explain structural choices. The decision to fund government primarily through import duties — taxes that fall disproportionately on the cost of daily necessities — is a structural choice, not a natural law. The regulatory environment governing the housing market, the barriers to new housing supply, the limited social housing provision — these too are choices, accumulated over decades of policy decisions, and they can be revisited. The concentration of the economy in internationally oriented financial services and insurance — which generates high average incomes at the top but relatively limited employment at accessible wage levels for Bermudians of modest educational background — this too reflects strategic decisions that have trade-offs that deserve honest public examination.

There is also the question of market competition. In a small island economy with a limited consumer base, the conditions for retail competition are structurally weak. A small number of supermarket operators serve the entire island. Limited retail competition, combined with high import duties, creates a price environment in which consumers have little meaningful ability to seek better value. The result is a captive consumer base paying prices that would be unsustainable in any more competitive environment.

The international reinsurance and finance sector — Bermuda's economic engine — operates in a different price world from ordinary Bermudians. Executives and senior professionals in the international business sector command salaries that make $22 chicken affordable. The cost-of-living crisis, for them, is an inconvenience, not a survival challenge. The danger is that policy is shaped by the experience of those for whom the prices are manageable, rather than the growing number for whom they are not.

The cost to the community

Beyond the economics lies a question that does not reduce to numbers, and it may be the most important question of all: what kind of community are we becoming?

Community is not simply an aggregate of economic transactions. It is built through proximity, continuity, shared memory, mutual obligation and the ordinary texture of daily life — neighbours who know one another, churches that stay together, schools that are woven into families across generations, the rhythms of social life that give a place its particular character.

All of this is threatened when the economics of daily living force people to leave, or force them into a kind of internal exile — present in body but absent in spirit, too financially stressed to participate fully in community life.

What happens to the churches when the congregation cannot afford to stay? What happens to the community sports teams, the local associations, the informal networks of care and support that hold a small community together, when the people who have always sustained them are emigrating or working two jobs to cover the rent? What happens to the sense of home when home becomes a place you love but cannot afford?

These are not rhetorical questions. They describe real losses that are already happening, quietly and without fanfare, in the fabric of Bermudian community life. The social costs of the cost-of-living crisis are not captured in any GDP statistic or inflation index. But they are real, and they are cumulative, and they are the kind of loss that is very difficult to recover once it reaches a critical threshold.

"When people who love this island feel they have no choice but to leave it, something is broken — not in them, but in the conditions we have collectively allowed to persist."

A call for honest action

This article is not primarily a policy manifesto. But honesty requires acknowledging that the crisis described here will not resolve itself, and that incremental adjustments at the margins are insufficient to the scale of the challenge.

The conversation we need to have — urgently, honestly and with genuine inclusivity — must address the tax structure that places the heaviest burdens on the most basic necessities of life. It must grapple with housing supply and affordability in ways that go beyond the cosmetic. It must consider whether the economic model that generates exceptional wealth at the top of the income distribution is generating sufficient economic inclusion for those who are not in the international business sector. And it must take seriously the voices of the people who have already voted with their feet — not to condemn them but to understand what they are telling us.

The Government's own emigration survey acknowledged that respondents pointed to "a more manageable cost of living" as the single most cited factor that might have prevented their departure (Government of Bermuda, 2025). This is not ambiguous data. It is a direct message from people who loved Bermuda enough to spend time telling us why they felt they could no longer live here.

It is also worth acknowledging the things that Bermuda does right. The island has a functioning democracy, low violent crime, a strong social fabric, spectacular natural beauty, and a community that, when it comes together, is capable of extraordinary solidarity. These are not trivial assets. They are the foundation on which a better economic arrangement could be built — if the political will exists to build it.

The test of a community is not how it treats those who are thriving. It is how it treats those who are struggling — the family in the supermarket replacing the chicken with something cheaper, the young nurse calculating whether she can afford another year on the island, the retired teacher wondering if her pension will stretch to the end of the month. What Bermuda decides to do for these people — and what it decides about the structural conditions that put them in this position — will define what kind of community it chooses to be.

This island is worth fighting for. But the fight must start with the truth about what it costs to live here — and who is paying that cost in ways they can no longer sustain.

References

Bermuda-Attractions.com (2023) Bermuda's Incredibly High Cost of Living. Available at: www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda_0001c7.htm (accessed June 2026)

CityCost.org (2026) Cost of Living in Bermuda — Prices and Expenses, April 2026. Available at: citycost.org/bermuda (accessed June 2026)

EasyCleanCook.PRO (2025) The Culinary Costs of Paradise: How Much Is Food in Bermuda?, August 22. Available at: easycleancook.pro/how-much-is-food-in-bermuda (accessed June 2026)

Government of Bermuda (2025) Factors Driving Emigration in Bermuda: January 2025 Emigration Survey Report and Retaining the Local Workforce Position Paper 2024. Available at: gov.bm/articles/factors-driving-emigration-bermuda (accessed June 2026)

HikersBay (2026) Prices in Bermuda 2026: Restaurants, Food, Transportation, Fuel, Hotels. Available at: https://hikersbay.com/prices/uk/bermuda (accessed June 2026)

JBM Realty (2026) Cost of Living in Bermuda 2026: Complete Expenses and Relocation Budget Guide, March 30. Available at: www.jbm-realty.com/news/cost-of-living-in-bermuda-2026-complete-expenses-relocation-budget-guide (accessed June 2026)

LivingCostIndex.com (2025) Cost of Living in Bermuda in 2026. Available at: livingcostindex.com/countries/bermuda (accessed June 2026)

The Royal Gazette (2018) Understanding Our Poverty, June 5. Available at: www.royalgazette.com/opinion-writer/article/20180605/understanding-our-poverty (accessed June 2026)

Stubbs, R (2018) Bermuda: Inequality and Poverty in a UK Overseas Territory, Tax Justice Network, June 21. Available at: taxjustice.net/2018/06/21/bermuda-inequality-and-poverty-in-uk-overseas-territory (accessed June 2026)

Trek.zone (2025) Prices in Bermuda: Cost of Living and Travel Budget Calculator. Available at: trek.zone/en/bermuda/prices (accessed June 2026)

Wikipedia (2025) Economy of Bermuda. Available at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Bermuda (accessed June 2026)

Wise.com (2026) Cost of Living in Bermuda in 2026. Available at: wise.com/gb/cost-of-living/bermuda (accessed June 2026)

• David Annan lectures on economics at the Bermuda College