The AI boom hasn’t stopped U.S. companies from hiring cheap offshore labor, and overseas call center employment is still skyrocketing
Despite the rise of AI in customer service, offshore call center employment continues to grow, particularly in the Philippines, where jobs have nearly doubled since 2016. Economists point to Jevons paradox, where increased efficiency from AI lowers costs and drives higher demand for services, leading to more hiring rather than less. This trend mirrors other fields like radiology, where automation was expected to reduce jobs but instead demand has grown.
- ▪Call center employment in the Philippines rose nearly every year from 2016 to 2025, reaching about 2 million workers.
- ▪From 2021 to March 2026, unemployment in the Philippines dropped from 9% to 4%, indicating AI has not displaced offshore workers.
- ▪A 2023 study found AI increased productivity for customer support agents by an average of 14% per hour.
- ▪The Philippines surpassed India as the largest call center employer about 15 years ago due to lower labor costs.
- ▪The Brookings Institution estimated 86% of customer service tasks have high automation potential, yet demand for human workers remains strong.
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In September 2025, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the company slashed 4,000 customer service roles, opting for the remaining 5,000 support workers to share their roles with AI agents.Recommended Video “I need less heads,” Benioff said at the time. But as more companies adopt agentic AI in hopes of replacing or making human workers more efficient, one top economist has noted that customer service roles—particularly those overseas—are only growing. Citing data from the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines, Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok noted in a recent blog post that from 2016 through 2025, call center employment in the Philippines has risen each year, nearly doubling to 2 million over the 10-year span.
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