Economist Says Philippine Call Center Jobs Rose as AI Adoption Grew

Call center employment in the Philippines rose each year from 2016 through 2025 and nearly doubled to 2 million jobs, according to data cited by Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok. Unemployment in the Philippines fell from 9 percent in 2021 to about 4 percent in March 2026. In India, unemployment stayed near 7 percent over the same period.

Offshore call center jobs expanded in the late 1990s and early 2000s as companies sought lower labor costs. Filipino workers earn between 15,000 and 120,000 Philippine pesos per month, or roughly $243 to $1,948. U.S. call center wage is about $2,866 per month, according to Indeed. The Philippines overtook India as the largest call center employer about 15 years ago.

September 2025, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the company cut 4,000 customer service positions and assigned the remaining 5,000 workers to share tasks with AI agents. Slok described the pattern as an example of Jevons paradox, noting that cheaper and faster call center work has led companies to purchase more of it rather than less.

A 2023 study led by Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson found that an AI conversational tool raised productivity by 14 percent per hour among more than 5,000 customer support agents. University of Virginia economist Emma Harrington said the data reflect easier cross-border labor trade when language translation improves.

Cornell sociologist Benjamin Shestakofsky said some companies continue to offer human agents because customers prefer them. The Brookings Institution estimated that 86 percent of customer service representative tasks carry high automation potential.