- Jamaica's outsourcing sector has shed roughly 20,000 jobs in two years, from 60,000 workers to 40,000, and GSAJ president Yoni Epstein says AI is not one of the causes.
- Digicel's Ruby assistant, built on technology from Canadian AI firm Ada, resolved 55% of more than 535,000 Jamaican customer conversations without a human agent, per Digicel's 2026 Sustainability Report. Digicel plans to extend it to more of its 25 markets by March 2027.
- Annual BPO receipts fell from close to $1 billion to $780 million in the year to March 2026, and Kingston and Montego Bay now have over 245,000 square feet of former BPO office space on the market.
- Trade consultant Yaneek Page's 6 September Gleaner column calls for shifting the sector's BPO-to-KPO mix from 80:20 to 60:40, backed by published occupational transition mapping and public tracking of displaced workers.
- The industry is probably right about the last 20,000 job losses. Ruby shows the same kind of work is now automatable inside Jamaica, which matters for the next round.
Jamaica has shed 20,000 outsourcing jobs in two years, and the newly elected president of the Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ) told the Gleaner that those losses had nothing to do with artificial intelligence. About five weeks later, in late August, Digicel's 2026 Sustainability Report included a customer service figure: Ruby, the company's AI assistant, has handled more than 535,000 conversations in Jamaica and closed 55% of them without a human agent joining. Both claims can be true. They describe the same industry five weeks apart.
The 20,000 jobs, and what the industry says caused them
Yoni Epstein, GSAJ's president, told the Gleaner in July: "The job loss has been caused by a few things, but artificial intelligence isn't one of them." He named low productivity, the disruption of Hurricane Melissa in October 2025, a labour market too tight to staff at the old scale, and companies relocating to jurisdictions with better incentives. By GSAJ's count, employment fell from about 60,000 to 40,000 over two years. Government data shows a smaller drop over the same period, from 62,000 to under 50,000.
Receipts fell with the headcount. Annual sector earnings were close to $1 billion at their peak and fell to $780 million in the financial year to March 2026, trade consultant Yaneek Page reported in the Gleaner on 6 September. Kingston and Montego Bay now have more than 245,000 square feet of former BPO office space on the market.
Page proposes moving the sector's mix of BPO to knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) from about 80:20 to 60:40, towards accounting, legal-process support, specialised financial processing, software administration and data analytics. She attaches four conditions:
- published mapping of which occupations are shrinking and growing, and the qualifications each needs;
- a rule that any employer taking public support helps design the resulting curriculum and apprenticeships;
- a property-by-property audit of the empty office space;
- public reporting of how many displaced workers are retrained and rehired.
What Ruby does, and how to read the 55%
Ruby runs on WhatsApp, voice calls, the web and the MyDigicel app, on a platform from Ada, and handles a telecom's routine transactions: balance checks, plan activation, bill payment and common technical faults. Digicel launched the upgraded version in Jamaica first, during the financial year to March 2026, and plans to extend it across more of its 25 Caribbean and Central American markets before March 2027.
That is the same work Jamaica's outsourcing sector sells abroad: answering calls, chats and WhatsApp messages on behalf of a company. Digicel ran it through an AI system inside Jamaica and resolved more than half without a person, across over half a million conversations.
One caution on the headline number. In contact-centre reporting, "resolved without a human" usually means the customer did not ask for an agent before the chat ended, which can include people who gave up. The figure that would show real resolution is how many of those customers contacted Digicel again about the same issue within a week. The sustainability report does not give it.
The wider market is moving the same way. Gartner projected that conversational AI would cut contact-centre labour costs by $80 billion globally in 2026, and Salesforce research found the share of service organisations using AI agents rose from 39% to 66% in a year. These are not Caribbean figures, but they describe the clients Jamaican BPOs serve.
Epstein's account covers the last two years, not the next two
I founded StarApple AI in Kingston and have worked on customer-facing systems for banks, insurers and telecoms. Epstein's diagnosis of the past two years is probably right. A contact centre with low productivity, hit by a hurricane and competing with better-incentivised locations does not need AI to explain its losses, and blaming AI would let the sector avoid fixing its cost structure.
Ruby's result did not depend on the sector failing first. It took a telecom with the capital to license Ada's platform, connect it to WhatsApp and an app, and run it against the queries a BPO seat would otherwise handle. Every client paying a Jamaican BPO to answer calls can now point to a working example in the same country on the same kind of query. GSAJ will find it harder to say the next contraction has nothing to do with AI.
What the KPO shift needs to last
Page's four conditions are the right shape. What is missing is an AI skills track running underneath them, because accounting support, legal-process work and data analytics are also being reshaped by the same tools. A worker moved from a BPO seat to a KPO seat that is automated within three years has had the problem postponed, at their own cost.
Part of that pipeline has to start in school. The Genius Project, the tuition-free AI camp I co-founded for Caribbean youth with backing from the Caribbean AI Association and Maestro AI Labs, works with the students who will fill those roles in five years. The Caribbean AI Risk Management Council has argued separately for a regional method to measure whether AI removes a whole job or only tasks within it, a distinction Jamaica's BPO debate has mostly skipped.
Digicel's rollout to its other markets is due by March 2027, about six months away. That is enough time to publish the first occupational transition map Page is asking for, if AI Jamaica, GSAJ and the ministries start before the next employment figures arrive.
What to do next
- BPO agents on customer service accounts: list the query types you handle in a week and mark which ones a bot like Ruby already resolves (balances, payments, password resets). If they are over half your work, enrol in one KPO-track certificate this quarter, for example an ACCA accounting technician qualification or a HEART/NSTA Trust course in data or software support.
- BPO operators and GSAJ members: run your own pilot on one line of business before a client does it for you, and use the savings to fund retraining of the agents affected. Measure repeat contacts within seven days, not just containment.
- GSAJ and JAMPRO: publish the occupation-by-occupation transition map Page describes, starting with the ten most common BPO job titles, before Digicel's March 2027 rollout.
- Ministry of Labour and Social Security and STATIN: add an AI-related reason code to redundancy notices and the labour force survey, so the next contraction can be attributed with data instead of statements.
- Digicel: publish the repeat-contact rate for Ruby-resolved conversations and the headcount change in Jamaican customer care alongside the 55% figure in the next report.
Frequently Asked Questions
What redundancy pay is a Jamaican BPO worker entitled to?
Under the Employment (Termination and Redundancy Payments) Act, an employee with at least 104 weeks of continuous service who is made redundant is entitled to redundancy pay. The rate is two weeks' pay for each year of service up to ten years, and three weeks' pay for each year after that. The Ministry of Labour and Social Security handles disputes, so contact it if an employer refuses or underpays.
Where can a displaced BPO worker get free or low-cost retraining in Jamaica?
HEART/NSTA Trust runs free and subsidised courses, including in business administration, accounting support, data operations and IT support, and issues nationally recognised certificates. Ask your former employer and GSAJ whether any placement or apprenticeship scheme is linked to the course, since a certificate with a placement leads to a job more often than a certificate alone.
What does 'resolved without a human agent' mean in customer service reporting?
It usually means the conversation ended without the customer being handed to a person, often called the containment rate. That can include customers who gave up or called back later. The better measures are the repeat-contact rate on the same issue within a few days and customer satisfaction scores for bot-only conversations.
What is the difference between BPO and KPO work?
Business process outsourcing covers high-volume, rules-based work such as customer service calls and data entry. Knowledge process outsourcing covers work that needs professional judgement, such as accounting, legal-process support, financial analysis and data analytics, and usually pays more. KPO roles typically ask for a recognised qualification, so budget three to eighteen months of study to move across.
Will Ruby's expansion to Digicel's other Caribbean markets cost more jobs?
Digicel has not published a jobs projection, and its 2026 Sustainability Report describes Ruby as supporting rather than replacing human agents. A system that resolves 55% of contacts without a person will still reduce the number of agent hours each market needs. Watch Digicel's customer care hiring in each market after launch for the real effect.