Raúl Parra wakes up before dawn six days a week. By day he teaches physical education at a public school in Caracas. By evening he works as a physical therapist, treating patients in the small apartment he rents with a friend. He has two jobs, a university degree, and a government salary—and he still cannot comfortably afford groceries.
“It’s tough to be a teacher in Venezuela,” Parra says. As a full-time teacher with an education degree, he gets paid around $160 a month by the Venezuelan government—an amount that barely covers his groceries. “I need to work multiple jobs so that I can pay for services, pay my rent, and help my parents.”
Parra’s situation is not exceptional. It is Venezuela. And it is the human reality behind the diplomatic announcements, oil deals, and gold contracts that have dominated the headlines since U.S. forces removed Nicolás Maduro from power on January 3. Washington and Caracas are moving fast. Ordinary Venezuelans are being told to wait.
A Decade of Collapse, By the Numbers
To understand where Venezuela stands today, it helps to understand the scale of what the Maduro years destroyed. Venezuela’s economy contracted 75% over the last eleven years. Nominal GDP, which stood at $460 billion a decade ago, may reach only $122 billion this year. GDP per capita has fallen from $15,500 to around $3,000 annually. For the economy to return to its previous size, it would need to grow 20 to 25 percent per year for at least six years.
“Currently, Venezuela’s total GDP is comparable to that of a city like Bogotá or Medellín in Colombia,” said Aldo Contreras, an economist and professor at the Universidad de Los Andes. “That helps explain why even with growth on paper, people may not perceive better living conditions.”
When the Venezuelan government was starved of oil revenue under sanctions, it resorted to having the central bank print more money—triggering a wave of hyperinflation that obliterated salaries and savings. The ensuing humanitarian crisis was a primary driver behind the mass exodus of nearly 8 million Venezuelans that began in 2019.
For those who remained, adaptation became a survival strategy. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimates Venezuela transferred about $44.9 billion in cryptocurrency over the past year—underscoring the growing role of digital assets as a parallel payment system in a country where the official minimum monthly salary remains effectively $0.30.
The Oil Revival—and Its Limits
The geopolitical shift triggered by Maduro’s removal has produced real economic movement at the top of Venezuela’s economy. Oil represents more than 90% of Venezuelan exports and a significant share of the country’s fiscal revenues.
Under the Maduro administration, oil production fell by more than 1.5 million barrels per day due to mismanagement, expropriation of oil assets, default on external debt, and severe deterioration in the industry’s governance and operational standards—leaving production at around 1 million barrels per day.
On January 29, interim President Delcy Rodríguez announced a broad reform of the hydrocarbons sector designed to facilitate foreign investment. With some U.S. sanctions lifted since the strike, and Washington pushing oil majors to invest billions into Venezuela’s energy sector, Venezuela’s oil revenue is expected to grow in a way no one could have projected at the end of 2025.
Economist Jesús Palacios said that the U.S. Treasury’s decision to allow American companies to buy Venezuelan oil could easily boost the government’s income and spearhead a recovery, particularly because Venezuela had previously been forced to sell its oil at steep discounts to Asian traders willing to skirt U.S. sanctions. Now that oil can be sold at regular market prices.
A new law opening the country’s oil fields to private investors is also expected to increase production further.
But the distance between those macro-level gains and Parra’s grocery bill is vast—and the economists tracking Venezuela’s recovery are not minimizing it. Colombia University’s Luisa Palacios estimates that even an optimistic increase in oil production of 500,000 to 1 million barrels per day within a two-year horizon—which would raise output to pre-2019 sanctions levels—would require foreign companies to increase spending within their existing licenses and would demand a meaningful change in the oil law to allow significant private investor participation.
Industry response has been cautious. The political situation in Venezuela remains fluid, with questions about governmental authority and long-term stability. The safety of personnel and security of equipment remain initial concerns for industry participants. Global oil prices are currently low, and U.S. oil and gas companies are closely guarding capital even for investments in mature, stable fields at home.
Law firm Miller & Chevalier’s Latin America practice lead Matteson Ellis described the operating environment bluntly: “PDVSA is perhaps the most corrupt state-owned entity in Latin America. To do energy-sector work, companies are going to have to interact with PDVSA—and then beyond that, extortion and bribery requests from local officials are constant. There haven’t been many international companies in Venezuela for so many years. It’s really an unknown landscape."
Hope at the Street Level—With Heavy Caveats
Despite the structural obstacles, something has shifted in Venezuela’s streets since January 3—even if economists cannot yet put a precise number on it.
Roughly 70% of Venezuelans polled by Premise for The Economist said they expect their family’s economic situation to improve by January 2027. More than 75% said the political situation would improve in the same time frame.
The gap between elite political transitions and kitchen-table reality has always been Venezuela’s central challenge—but the psychological shift triggered by Maduro’s removal appears genuine, even among those whose material circumstances have not yet changed.
Washington and Caracas have moved quickly to open Venezuela’s oil sector to U.S. investment. Ordinary Venezuelans will wait longer to feel any benefit.
The Washington Post’s reporting from Caracas captured the disparity: American oil traders are poised to descend on the capital, direct flights may soon resume, and the U.S. Embassy is preparing to reopen—while residents like Parra still need two jobs to cover necessities.
The existing growth in Venezuela is largely concentrated in trade and services. Small businesses—bakeries, hardware stores, and mini-markets—have expanded, supported in part by remittances estimated at more than $4 billion a year. By contrast, productive sectors such as manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and livestock remain largely dormant. Construction activity has been effectively paralyzed for more than a decade.
“Sanctions have been partially relaxed, but without legal certainty, credit, or infrastructure, alternative sectors simply don’t take off,” said economist Aldo Contreras. Tourism, banking, and construction hold potential but remain constrained by political risk and capital shortages.
The Political Economy of Patience
After more than a decade of economic misery and authoritarian rule, the Rodríguez government has a short runway to show Venezuelans that their quality of life will improve. Trump and Rodríguez are banking on oil for the success of the political future of Venezuela. But that may not be enough for Venezuelans who want more than just economic relief.
The historical precedent for post-authoritarian economic recoveries in resource-dependent states is sobering. Iraq’s oil production returned to pre-war levels within five years of the 2003 invasion—but per capita living standards took far longer to recover, and political instability persistently undermined economic normalization. Venezuela’s path may be smoother given the absence of armed conflict, but the structural challenges—a collapsed public sector, a diaspora of eight million including many of the country’s most skilled workers, and a debt burden estimated at $170 billion—are daunting regardless of how quickly oil revenue begins to flow.
Carole Nakhle, CEO of Crystol Energy, warned that instability, not oil supply, is the real risk. “Markets can handle Venezuelan barrels,” she said. “They cannot easily price prolonged political disorder.”
For Raúl Parra, the calculation is more immediate. “January 3rd was a milestone for us,” he said. “We feel that now there is an opportunity for workers to have better wages.”
Whether that opportunity translates into a raise before he has to take on a third job is a question that no oil deal, gold contract, or diplomatic restoration can answer on its own.
Venezuela is open for business. The question is how long its people can afford to wait for the benefits to arrive.
