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Outsourcing did not shrink. The routine work inside it did
Philippine outsourcing grew 24% since 2022. The routine tier is what shrank.
InsiderPH reported that ING, in a research note on India and the Philippines, found no broad-based decline in Philippine services exports or jobs from generative AI. The sector ING is describing runs more than $40 billion a year and supports roughly 1.9 million workers. ING's analysis puts the Philippines at 15 percent to 17 percent of worldwide business process outsourcing. We place people into that market, so the total was not the number I looked at first. The tier underneath it was.
What the note found
ING said combined telecommunications, computer and business services exports rose to 7.1 percent of GDP by mid-2026, from 6.3% before the pandemic. Citing World Trade Organization data, ING put Philippine digitally delivered services exports up 24% since 2022. Financial services exports have expanded around 25% annually over that span. Business services, the traditional core, have moderated. The total held. The mix moved.
That is the entire finding, and it reads as reassurance. I do not read it that way. Growth at the higher-skilled end is not growth everywhere. ING called it an upgrade rather than a decline. An upgrade with a tier missing at the bottom.
Where the pressure lands
The automation case is real in the places ING named. Large language models are already faster at document verification, data entry and first-pass legal review. Rules-based and repetitive. It is also a large share of what firms send offshore in the first place. ING also cited ILO estimates that more than a quarter of Philippine jobs are exposed to generative AI, the highest share among comparable ASEAN economies. Price this work on last year's assumptions and you are pricing something moving under you.
Exposure is not displacement, and ING separated the two. Only about 4 percent of Philippine jobs sit in the highest-risk category. Employment in information and communication and in professional, scientific and technical services grew about 4.5% over the past year, close to its longer-term trend. Steady. Unremarkable. The routine tier is under pressure and the judgment tier is hiring.
Composition, not collapse.
What a firm buys now
The firm's side of this changes too. A brief written as a list of repetitive tasks buys the tier that is being automated, cheap and specific and about to be free. Your job description has never been cross-examined. ING put other business services, including professional consulting and legal services, at around 40% of global digitally delivered services exports, which is the end of the market actually growing. So the role worth specifying is the one holding judgment, not the one holding a keyboard. Revenue says a sector is healthy; postings say which jobs it is buying, and Indeed Hiring Lab tracks posting volume by occupation over time.
The typing was never the asset.
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