Global Call-Center Headcount Sits 5.3% Below Its 2023 Peak

Global call-center employment is “5.3% below its December 2023 peak”, according to a Revelio Labs report published on 6 October 2026. Revelio Labs is a workforce-data company; the figure comes from what it calls its “global headcount data”.

Andreessen Horowitz posted its own charts of Revelio’s data on X. Its 9 October post read: “Call center jobs grew ~4% annually for 15 years” and “Now they’re shrinking 4% annually”. Its 10 October post added: “Call center job losses started in wealthy countries, now they’re everywhere”.

What Revelio’s Data Shows

Revelio counts 70 quarter-end readings since 2009. Headcount fell from a year earlier “only eight times, and all eight have come in the last eight quarters.” It adds that “the most recent quarter showing the steepest drop yet.”

The fall did not arrive everywhere at once. Revelio says the decline appeared first in higher-income countries and spread to middle- and then lower-income ones. By mid-2024 the global growth rate turned negative, “with all markets experiencing declines by the fourth quarter of 2025.” It also notes that “certain countries, like China and Nigeria, still show growth.”

Revelio writes that companies “had a clear reason to relocate operations to lower-income countries”. Its wage data shows average pay of $22.52 an hour in high-income countries, $5.44 in upper-middle-income countries and $2.32 in the six lower-middle-income countries.

How the Decline Is Happening

Across 12 middle-income countries, Revelio says the entry rate into call-center work “fell from 25.1 to 17.2 per 100 workers since November 2022, while the exit rate also fell, from 22.3 to 18.5.” Its conclusion: “The industry is shrinking because hiring slowed, not because separations picked up.”

For people who do leave, Revelio tracked the first job within 12 months. “Half of observed movers, 49.7%, go sideways” into another customer-service job, sales, or office and HR work. Only 10.8% reach higher-paying technical support, customer success, or software and data roles.

Revelio’s report also cites two operators: TP is targeting “€150 to 170 million in annual savings from an AI and cost-reduction program, while TaskUs’s CEO has said agentic AI could cut customer support costs by 25 to 50%”.

Where Office Work Is Still Growing

In the same 12 countries, Revelio says the better-paid office work is still growing. Software and data pays more than double the hourly rate of a call-center job and grew 8.9% over the last year. Customer success and client relations carries a 50% premium and grew 7.2%. Technical support pays 31% more and expanded 2.6%.

Call centers, the lowest-paid of the four, are in Revelio’s words “the only ones contracting.” Movers who stay in the same country at the same seniority saw median pay changes of +11.4% into technical support, +7.1% into customer success and +12.7% into software and data.

What a16z Added

a16z’s charts credit “Revelio Labs (10.6.26)” as their source. In its newsletter of 9 October, a16z wrote that “while higher-income countries went negative in 2022, lower-middle income countries stayed positive for another ~2 years. But, as of Q4’25, call center employment growth has gone negative everywhere, even in the poorest countries.”

a16z went further than Revelio on cause. It wrote that “call centers were always expected to be a likely target of substitution, so it seems reasonable to conclude that AI is the driver here.” The same newsletter noted that “growth began slowing when interest rates went up, which is slightly before GPT was released into the wild”, and that in the US “unemployment has been relatively stable”.

We have previously covered Anthropic’s study of how much work robots can do and China’s AI jobs action plan, and separately a16z’s chart on agent token usage on OpenRouter.

The Structural Read

Revelio’s report counts year-on-year falls in 8 of 70 quarter-end readings since 2009, all of them in the last eight quarters, and puts global call-center employment 5.3% below its December 2023 peak.

As we read it, the report separates two claims that a16z joins. Revelio describes the decline as “surely multifaceted” and says “we cannot observe which firms replace people with chatbots”; a16z, citing the same data, concludes that “it seems reasonable to conclude that AI is the driver here.”

The report’s figures on where workers go are the part a16z’s posts leave out: 49.7% of movers go sideways and 10.8% reach the higher-paying roles that, by Revelio’s account, are still growing.

Three Implications

CUSTOMER-SUPPORT OPERATORS Revelio’s report cites TP targeting “€150 to 170 million in annual savings from an AI and cost-reduction program” and TaskUs’s CEO on cutting customer support costs by 25 to 50%.

WORKERS IN MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES Revelio says software and data, customer success and technical support grew over the last year; of observed movers whose first job within 12 months of leaving a call center it tracked, 10.8% reached those roles.

READERS OF THE A16Z CHARTS a16z’s charts cover different country sets, labelled global, “All 18 Countries” and 12 countries, so their figures are not one series.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework From SaaS to AGaaS.

The analysis puts it in one line: “SaaS is charged for access to tools. AGaaS charges for the execution of outcomes.”

As we read it, call-center work is one place to watch that line: the two operators Revelio cites describe cost savings from AI, and Revelio’s headcount data shows entries into the work falling faster than exits.

What Is Not Established

Revelio does not attribute the decline to AI. It writes that “the decline is surely multifaceted”, possibly a correction from the post-pandemic hiring boom or cost-cutting driven by higher interest rates, and that “we cannot observe which firms replace people with chatbots.” Its case for AI rests on a divergence: call-center headcount falling while other white-collar work in the same countries grows.

The charts cover different sets of countries. a16z’s first chart is labelled global; its income-group chart draws a line for “All 18 Countries”; the white-collar comparison covers 12 countries. They are not one series, and the 4% figure in a16z’s post is its own description of the global chart. Revelio’s report does not describe how its headcount data is collected beyond calling it its global headcount data.

The Bottom Line

Revelio Labs says global call-center employment is 5.3% below its December 2023 peak, after eight straight quarters of year-on-year falls. It says the industry is shrinking because hiring slowed rather than because more people left. a16z, citing Revelio’s data, concluded that AI is the driver; Revelio itself calls the decline multifaceted and says it cannot see which firms replaced people with chatbots.