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Call Center Growth and Happenings Across the U.S.

Call center growth in the United States continues, thanks to a combination of expansions of existing companies and “re-shoring” initiatives that are bringing call center jobs that were formerly outsourced to foreign shores back to the U.S. The following is a roundup of recent happenings in call center openings and expansions.

The Idaho Department of Labor will hold a job fair on May 7 in Boise. The goal is to fill about 700 call center jobs available at the facilities of six different companies that are hiring for customer support positions. The companies with openings include CenturyLink, Citi, DirecTV (News - Alert), T-Mobile, WDS-Xerox and Wells Fargo, all of which have customer support facilities in the Boise area. (Location and specifics may be found here on the Idaho Dept. of Labor’s website.)

Call center jobs are being actively sought after for both unemployed and underemployed Americans. In Springfield, Kentucky, 28 open call center jobs for travel website Expedia (News - Alert) attracted about 300 local job seekers, according to local media site KY3. The applicants showed up at a job fair event at Springfield’s Hilton Garden Inn on a recent Tuesday. The jobs, which pay about $10.50 per hour plus commissions, attracted a number of hopeful candidates looking for both career prospects and benefits.

One growth area in call centers is the rise in monitoring contact centers for medical alert systems and devices. Such medical applications are becoming more common as the baby boom generation ages, expanding the population of senior citizens in the U.S.

GreatCall, Inc., which offers wireless health and safety services for aging consumers and their families, recently broke ground for a new call center in Reno, Nevada. The company said the new facility is in response to increased demand for its solutions, having seen its 5Star Urgent Care customer base grow by more than 250 percent in the year. GreatCall reportedly invested more than $1 million in the new 20,000-square-foot facility which is slated to open in June of this year.

While the opportunities for call center agents in the U.S. seem to be on the rise, this doesn’t mean that call center prospects in the usual foreign hotspots are on the wane. According to the Philippines’ Bureau of Local Employment (BLE), “call center agent” is still the hottest job in the Philippines, and demand is still far outstripping supply. Data from that agency show that during the last week in April, there were 2,757 call center agent jobs unfilled across the Philippines, according to the newspaper the Inquirer News.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson