by King White, on Jun 25, 2021 9:54:26 AM
Labor markets across the U.S. are extremely challenging for most employers, especially when trying to attract and retain lower wage positions like call center workers. One reason is the enhanced federal unemployment benefits which we discussed last month in our blog Unemployment Benefits Create Havoc for Employers and Site Selection Decisions. To help our clients target more attractive labor markets, the labor analytics team at Site Selection Group evaluates labor market data and does original market research including in-depth interviews with employers, staffing agencies, economic development and workforce development executives.
One of the datasets we often utilize includes job posting data which can be a good indicator of labor conditions. To help you understand how this trend might impact your site selection decisions, Site Selection Group has evaluated call center job postings to gauge the tightness of the labor market.
What is the job posting data?
To help evaluate labor markets, Site Selection Group utilizes job posting data collected from hundreds of millions of job postings created by employers by scraping them from the job posting websites. The unique job postings variable is the number of deduplicated job vacancy advertisements scraped from over 100,000 websites. These are active job postings that are currently online and advertised as available. The number of postings may be either higher or lower than the number of actual hires. Postings might outnumber hires when a company is trying hard to find talent, or postings may be significantly fewer than hires because certain types of jobs aren’t typically advertised online.
Historic call center job posting trends
The following graph shows the historic trend for unique call center job postings since January 2018. As you can see, job postings have been peaking in the last few months which indicates demand for U.S. call center workers has begun to rebound from the lows of the early months of the COVID pandemic.
Historic Call Center Job Postings - January 2018 to May 2021
Source: Emsi
States with highest number of call center job postings
Texas led the country in unique call center job postings in the first quarter of 2021. This isn’t surprising given the amount of success Texas has had in attracting call centers. Key cities like Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, Brownsville and McAllen have been hotbeds for call centers. Florida and Arizona also ranked very high which makes sense considering the amount of call center facilities located there. The following table identifies the top five states based on unique call center job postings.
Top 5 States for Call Center Job Postings - Q1 2021
| State | Unique Postings |
| Texas | 766 |
| Florida | 466 |
| California | 368 |
| New York | 289 |
| Arizona | 264 |
Source: Emsi
Average wages are reaching almost $15 per hour
The job posting data also captures the wages offered for these positions; however, not all job postings will have wages published. There were 3,994 job postings that had an average wage of $14.95 per hour for May 2021. This was an increase of basically $1 from April 2021 which had 3,622 job postings with an average wage of $13.97 per hour. This could also be an indication of the tightening call center labor market.
Companies with the most call center job postings
Some of the largest business process outsourcers such as Arise, Teleperformance, DialAmerica, MCI and Sykes had the most postings which makes sense considering they are some of the largest call center employers in the U.S. The following list identifies the top 25 companies that had the most unique call center job postings during the first quarter of 2021.
25 Companies with Most Unique Call Center Job Postings - Q1 2021
| Company | Unique Postings |
| Arise | 803 |
| Genesis Business Solutions LLC | 329 |
| Teleperformance | 313 |
| Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. | 301 |
| DialAmerica | 230 |
| Xtend Healthcare, LLC | 123 |
| Calliope Media, Inc. | 99 |
| Abbeville General Hospital | 85 |
| The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc | 79 |
| Computer Measurement Group Inc | 74 |
| Digital Market Media Group LLC | 74 |
| MCI | 72 |
| Arise Virtual Solutions Inc. | 69 |
| Sykes Enterprises, Incorporated | 67 |
| Focus Services, Inc | 61 |
| St. Joseph's Healthcare System, Inc. | 57 |
| Vri | 47 |
| The Bath Planet LLC | 39 |
| Mediacom Communications Corporation | 37 |
| Harry and David, LLC | 34 |
Source: Emsi
Conclusions
Attracting and retaining workers of all types has become extremely challenging as the country recovers from the COVID pandemic. The job posting data reflects this trend and is one indicator to utilize during the site selection process. There are many factors such as employee demographics, unemployment, call center saturation and others that need to be considered when trying to find the optimal call center labor market.
