How the industry that AI supposedly ‘killed’ has not stopped American companies from hiring abroad, and why it is only growing
Artificial intelligence was expected to heavily disrupt customer service and call center jobs, especially overseas support roles handled for American companies. But a Fortune report says the opposite is happening. Even as companies rapidly adopt AI tools and digital agents, offshore customer support employment in countries like the Philippines and India continues to grow. Economists now say AI may actually be expanding the industry instead of shrinking it by making customer support cheaper and faster to operate. The trend challenges repeated predictions from tech leaders who warned that AI would replace large numbers of human workers in customer service and other white-collar industries.
Overseas call center jobs are rising despite AI
According to the Fortune report, Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok cited data from the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines showing that call center employment in the country nearly doubled between 2016 and 2025 to around 2 million workers. The report also noted that unemployment in the Philippines dropped from around 9% in 2021 to nearly 4% by March 2026. In India, unemployment remained relatively stable at around 7%.The Philippines became the world’s largest call center employer around 15 years ago after overtaking India. American companies have long outsourced customer support work overseas because labor costs are significantly lower. Filipino call center workers earn far less on average compared to similar workers in the United States.
AI was expected to replace these jobs
Customer service has often been seen as one of the industries most vulnerable to AI automation. The Brookings Institution previously estimated that 86% of customer service representative tasks had high automation potential.In 2025, Marc Benioff said Salesforce had cut 4,000 customer service jobs while allowing remaining support workers to share responsibilities with AI agents. “I need less heads,” Benioff said at the time.However, Slok argued that AI may actually be increasing demand for customer support services. “This is Jevons paradox in action,” he wrote. “As AI makes call center work cheaper and faster, companies are buying more of it, not less.”He added: “Lower cost per interaction does not mean fewer interactions. It means more customers served, more channels opened and more markets worth reaching. The technology that was supposed to shrink the industry is fueling its expansion.”
Similar trends seen in other professions
The report said the same pattern may be visible in other professions that were once expected to disappear because of AI. AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton had earlier predicted radiology could become fully automated. But University of Virginia professor Christoph Herpfer told Fortune that the number of radiologists in the United States has actually increased by about 10% over the past decade.“We actually have a huge shortage of radiologists. So the exact opposite of this prediction has happened,” Herpfer said.
