Philippines Call Center Employment Rose to 2 Million from 2016 to 2025

Call center employment in the Philippines increased each year from 2016 through 2025, reaching 2 million workers. The Philippines overtook India as the largest call center employer about 15 years ago. Offshore call center jobs expanded in the late 1990s and early 2000s as companies sought lower labor costs.

Filipino call center workers earn monthly wages ranging from 15,000 to over 120,000 Philippine pesos, or about $243 to $1,948. U.S. is about $2,866.

Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok cited data from the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines showing the decade-long rise in employment. He also reported that unemployment in the Philippines declined from 9% in 2021 to about 4% by March 2026, while unemployment in India remained steady at around 7%.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in September 2025 that the company eliminated 4,000 customer service roles and assigned the remaining 5,000 support workers to share tasks with AI agents. Slok stated that lower costs from AI have increased demand for call center services rather than reducing it.

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. He said lower cost per interaction results in more customers served and more markets reached. A 2023 study led by Stanford Digital Economy Lab director Erik Brynjolfsson found that an AI conversational assistant increased productivity by an average of 14% per hour among more than 5,000 customer support agents.

U.S. increased by 10% over the past decade despite earlier predictions of automation. Cornell University sociologist Benjamin Shestakofsky told Fortune that AI may not yet handle complex customer issues and that some companies continue to offer human agents for brand reasons.

University of Virginia economics professor Emma Harrington said the data reflect easier cross-border labor trade when language processing improves.