Say goodbye to most customer service jobs.
Spotlight Phoenix, AZ.
The Wall Street Journal reports Phoenix Built an Empire of Cubicle Jobs. AI Is Coming to Tear It Down.
Abundant land and cheap labor made Phoenix a premier place for companies to stash lower-paid office workers who don’t need to be physically close to clients or headquarters. The cubicle-based jobs—customer service, data entry, payroll processing—created a vital ladder to the middle class, helping replace factory work lost to overseas competition.
Now, these white-collar jobs are fading, too, thanks to continued offshoring and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. Tens of thousands of local workers suddenly face an uncertain future.
A test grader saw her work outsourced to India. A customer-relations manager, recently laid off and his savings running low, is looking to become a bartender.
“I’m concerned that a lot of call-center workers will not have jobs pretty soon, me included,” said Vonda Wilkins, a Phoenix-based customer-service representative.
Many of her co-workers lost their jobs last year as their employer, , relied more on AI to engage with customers and landline use continued to drop. The technology has made her work more challenging, Wilkins says: Customers who reach her often had to talk first to bots and are more likely to be in a bad mood. The 49-year-old is making plans to go to nursing school.
Offshoring has been chipping away at back-office jobs for decades. Yet around 16.5 million Americans work in office- and administrative-support jobs like customer-service reps, office clerks and data-entry keyers, according to the Labor Department. That’s still more than the number working in manufacturing, but also down from around 18 million at the end of 2019. The number of customer-service representatives in metro Phoenix alone has tumbled 26% in the most recent four-year span the department measured.
Between 2000 and 2019, the number of people working in manufacturing fell by 26%, according to the Labor Department. During that period, full-time customer-service reps grew by 32%.
The jobs were often easy to get, required little training and generally paid better than retail and fast-food jobs. They also offered better opportunities to advance.
Call-center gigs got people into corporate offices and taught valuable soft skills like solving problems and talking to strangers. That helped workers climb the ladder to higher-paying careers like sales, said Mark Muro, senior fellow at the think tank Brookings Metro.
Now, with those entry-level jobs disappearing, there’s danger that “the pathways that provide mobility disintegrate and you lose the American promise of opportunity,” Muro said.
Geoff McGehee, 54, was laid off from his job as a senior customer-relationship manager at Sears Home Services in October. Before he lost his job, the company was aggressively rolling out AI to replace human customer-service workers, and McGehee helped integrate it into the company’s processes.
“I was literally digging my own grave,” he said.
He’s since applied for hundreds of back-office jobs, but hasn’t had any luck. With his savings dwindling, McGehee is widening his search. He’s started applying for bartending jobs—he recently took a two-week bartending course—and has considered training to become an electrician, which he considers more AI-proof.
“At least I can rewire my house,” he said.
Metro Phoenix Employment
The Black Hole
For decades, Jeff Seifert’s Tempe, Ariz.-based company Professional Placement/Pro-Tem Service has supplied local offices with accountants, office administrators and customer-service reps, among other roles. Demand plummeted over the past year, although it’s improved a little in recent months, he said.
Job seekers who walk through his door these days often complain about not getting any responses to their applications. “I’ve heard tons of candidates call it a black hole,” Seifert said.
Office- and administrative-support jobs are fading faster than manufacturing jobs are added. And the new blue-collar work is rarely a ready option for unemployed former office workers, according to employment-services professionals.
Musical Tribute
Get a Job was a big hit tune. And that’s a great video for early rock and roll fans.
Well every morning about this time (Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na)
She gets me out of bed, a-crying get a job (Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na)
After breakfast everyday she throws the want ads right my way
And never fails to say – get a jobLord, and when I get the paper I read it through and through
I, my girl never fail to see if there is any work for me…
I got to go back to the house, hear that woman’s mouth
Preachin’ and a cryin’, tell me that I’m lyin’ about a job
That I never could find
Fun Fact
The revival group Sha Na Na derived their name from the song’s doo-wop introduction.
They performed it at Woodstock in 1969.