Why the Philippines Is the Global Outsourcing Giant

Why the Philippines is the global Outsourcing giant. So there is always a gorilla in the room, and in this case, that gorilla you would typically think of as India. But the reality is the gorilla in the outsourcing room today is the Philippines. There's a whole bunch of reasons why it took the world a long time to wake up to it. But since 2007, the trend across the world has been to go to the Philippines for your outsourcing rather than anywhere else in the world. And, and while initially you might think of the Philippines as just a call center place, the reality is that they are really well known for their software development, for their animation, for engineering, for design, both graphic design and web design, for game development, medical transcription, and then also for call centers. The Philippines has such a vast array of talent and a population of over 100 million people that it's really easy to find one, whatever talent you're looking for. So then let's get into why the Philippines is the outsourcing giant. So I hired my first person from the Philippines in 2005. It was an amazing, life changing experience for me. But that's not when I recognized, wow, the world has really woken up to the Philippines. When I did it, there was nobody doing it. It was really a phone call in 2010 that happened with Amazon that woke me up to the Philippines is the new gorilla in the room. I called Amazon for a problem on an order that I had and I got someone in India and I couldn't really understand them and they couldn't understand me and they weren't helpful and I got frustrated and I hung up. Which you've had that experience. You get someone on the phone in India and it isn't working well. Now there's obviously good people in India, but the cultural differences and the accent are really difficult. I immediately called Amazon back and this time it immediately routed me to someone in the Philippines. Now I recognize that it was to the Philippines because I knew the accent, but if I hadn't known the accent, I would have had no idea. And the person on the phone was helpful and friendly and courteous and solved my problem almost immediately. That was the time where the light bulb went off for me where I said, oh my gosh. Where I realized the Philippines is the new gorilla in the room for outsourcing. So here are a bunch of reasons why. So the first reason and the number one biggest contributing factor is English literacy. The Philippines is the fourth largest English speaking population on the planet and outside of the US has the easiest to understand accent. Of all major English speaking countries. This makes communication really, really easy. In fact, so easy that you are very unlikely to ever have a communication problem with the people you hire in the Philippines. And this leads us to the second reason why the Philippines is the world's outsourcing guerrilla. It is government backing. Really early on, lots of years ago, the Philippines government recognized the world's trend towards outsourcing. And they did a number of things to improve their chances of participating in it. Number one, they mandated English as the official language of the Philippines. So the Philippines has two official languages. One is Tagalog, number two is English. So almost everybody learns English starting from a very, very young age. In addition, the government has significantly backed education and specifically education towards technical oriented jobs. The government has an agency that travels around the country and also virtually provides training to potential Filipino workers. They're promoting working online. They're interested in helping the Filipino population find jobs. They're interested in having companies for from overseas bring their work to the Philippines. In addition, they also recognize the struggle that most foreigners have in trusting someone overseas. So the government has tried to make that more secure for you. And they have made digital theft laws carry double the punishment of normal theft laws, which are already strict in the Philippines. So when your first instinct is, I don't know if I can trust this person, recognize that on their end, they have almost no incentive to ever steal anything from you because the potential consequences of that theft are so high, it's just not worth it to them. Now, the third reason why the Philippines is the global outsourcing gorilla is a reason that you wouldn't have expected. It is the very young population. So while most of Europe and the United States are not replacing their population currently where birth rates are lower than death rates, the Philippines is still a really young country where the largest group of population is under the age of 10. And since that's been the case for a while, they have a huge percentage of their English speaking population that has grown up with all of these technology changes that are happening. They've grown up with the Internet, they've grown up with YouTube, they've grown up with phones and apps. They understand the technology behind what you're trying to do. It's deeply ingrained in them. And when you combine that with the government backing of trying to help them do work for overseas companies, these younger people, as they age into the workforce, are exceptionally well prepared for the work that you want them to do. Combining that with their English literacy and the fact that they grew up learning English and Also grew up watching American TV and movies and American YouTube. It makes for a really good situation, which. Let's talk about culture as the number four reason why the Philippines is the global outsourcing giant. The the Philippines has a really easy culture to get along with. They're very Westernized. They watch American TV and movies. They follow the NBA. They watch Dancing with the Stars. And while not all of their media is American, so much of it is that they immediately understand American slang and American culture. They understand your customers. In addition, they're generally honest and they want to make you happy. That's part of their culture. It's a pleasing culture. It lends itself towards wanting to do a good job for their employer to make you happy. Making others happy is a driving force in Filipino culture. So with this Western culture and ease of culture, there actually is one thing that you should understand. Filipinos tend to be shy is what they call it. They don't want to lose face. So as you work with Filipinos, as you consider outsourcing to the Philippines, recognize that when something goes wrong for them, they don't want to confront you. They're shy about it. They don't want to create a conflict. So while communication is very easy, if you'll recognize this one thing in that they don't want to create a conflict. They don't want to lose face. You can solve almost any problem that you'll have in working with the Filipino workforce. The fifth reason why the Philippines is the global outsourcing giant is a high infrastructure rate compared to wages. One of the problems with outsourcing to overseas places has been their infrastructure has not caught up is their infrastructure has not kept up with the demand of foreign companies. Well, the Philippines has been different about that. When I started in 2005, the infrastructure wasn't great. The government has since made significant investments into infrastructure where we almost never see power outages and really almost never see Internet outages. And the Internet has gotten so good there that a couple of people on my team have Internet speeds of 500 megabits a second, which is faster than most people in the US Internet. Now, not everybody has that infrastructure, but most people in the Philippines have access to really fast Internet and also have really reliable power connections. Now combine that with the computer literacy rate, which is being taught from very young ages in schools, and that most people in the Philippines will have a computer in their home to work from. All of this infrastructure provides a really good base for being able to find people in the Philippines to work for you. It also Gives a lot of different options for how you're going to hire people. You don't necessarily have to go through an agency where they come into an office and the office provides them Internet and computer. They can work from home like many of your current employees do. This not only cuts out a middleman, it also significantly decreases cost of outsourcing, which cost is the number six reason why the Philippines is the global outsourcing giant. While infrastructure has significantly increased over the years, wages have definitely gone up but have not kept up with US wages. And the Philippines is a very affordable country to outsource to. As of this recording in 2025, current rates range from around $400 a month for full time work to $2,000 a month for full time work. And in that range you're getting very very beginners, people who know very little and yet they're probably a college graduate all the way up to super high experts, social buyer or very high end programmer or super high end user interface designer. And you can find anything in between content writers that are perfectly fluent in English and are really really skilled Social media managers, SEO graphic design, Shopify store experts or Amazon experts. You can find data entry people or general executive admin assistants. The cost for full time work is significantly lower than western developed countries. Now a note about this. While I've been hiring since 2005, I've seen rates go up quite a bit. The first person I ever hired started off at $250 a month. His salary has doubled multiple times since then. The first programmer I hired in 2006 was one of the best programmers I've ever worked with and he also made $250 a month. Now wages have gone up significantly since then, but they're still significantly more affordable than US or Australian or UK based labor. Reason number seven why the Philippines is such an outsourcing giant is the high education rates. The Philippines government and Philippines culture places significant value and emphasis on education. So most of the people you will find in the Philippines will have a college degree. So most of the people you will find in the Philippines will have a university education and and a lot of them will have multiple degrees or a postgraduate degree. So let me explain that the Philippines has what we would consider normal grade school and then a shortened high school. Their high school would be like grades 9, 10 and 11. Then a number of years ago they implemented senior high school which would be like grades 12 and 13 where they start to specialize in something. After high school they will go to university and that university will be A three or a four year degree. So the number of years of education in the Philippines is often more than you'll find for people in the us. And this education is across all sectors from attorneys, engineers, medical industry, including doctors and dentists, software development, animation, graphic design, business, finance, accounting, marketing. The reality is the Philippines is a very highly educated country. This also makes them uniquely qualified to handle onslaught of AI into the workforce. While you may ask, is AI going to replace the need to outsource? Filipinos are uniquely situated to overcome the challenges of AI and become the ones running the AIs and developing the AIs rather than just being replaced by them. Which this leads us to number eight. The Philippines has a strong work ethic and a desire to think. Their education system instills in them a desire to think and to contribute in the workforce. Very often they don't just want a menial job doing data entry, they want to contribute to the company. They want to think through problems and solve them. And with that they want to work hard. It's not the same as in the US job market where if they don't like their job, it's easy to just go find another job. In the Philippines, when they find a job working for a foreign employer, they want to keep that job. They want to do good for the company. And that strong work ethic also lends itself towards being very, very loyal to their foreign employers. In addition, the Philippines experiences a lot of natural disasters over the years. They've been colonized multiple times. They're very resilient, they overcome adversity really well. Which means in the workforce they're willing to think through problems and solve things and come up with solutions. As independent contractors, as staff being added to your business, this makes them very valuable workers. Now, on a personal note, as I said, I've been hiring people in the Philippines since 2005. That first person that I ever hired still works for me today. Today he helps run an eight figure company that I own. In addition to him, I have people that I've hired in 2007, in 2009 and 2010 and 2011, all who still work for me today. They're super loyal, they think through problems, they come up with solutions. They're great at working with our customers. They do amazing work. This video is being edited in the Philippines by one of my amazing video editors. The last reason why the Philippines is the global outsourcing giant is really the people are good people. They want to work hard, they want to do a good job for you. They want to contribute to your company. They want to think and solve problems and they want a career, not just a gig. So as you consider outsourcing to the Philippines, consider treating someone well. Consider bringing them into your company rather than just outsourcing to them. Consider insourcing rather than outsourcing, where they become part of your company and part of your company culture and part of your company family, rather than just a robot on the other side of the world, which is so often what we consider as we outsource. If you like this, subscribe to my channel. I have a whole bunch more videos about the Philippines and specifically how to hire virtual assistants and staff and workforce overseas that is going to help you build your business and grow your company.