Wales hosts roughly 30,000 contact centre jobs, a sector built to replace heavy industry employment. AI automation now threatens those positions, prompting calls for a government strategy to redirect worker expertise.
30,000 Jobs at Risk
In Swansea alone, nearly 9 in 10 jobs sit in service industries, with an estimated 5,000 in call centres. The Wales Economic and Fiscal Report 2025 flags automation and AI as growing risks for routine service roles.
Emma Northcote, head of engagement at Perago consultancy, wrote an open letter to the incoming Welsh Government highlighting the tension between past policy attracting call centres and current policy backing AI that displaces them.
Tacit Knowledge Worth Preserving
Call centre workers hold deep knowledge about how Welsh public services and customers operate not scripts, but understanding what callers actually need and where systems break down. That knowledge took years to build and disappears quickly in standard redundancy programmes.
When Caerphilly County Borough Council redesigned contact services, two team members held over 60 years of combined knowledge about council services. That understanding proved invaluable for customer outcomes.
AI Redirects, Not Replaces
Natural-language AI now handles opening seconds of many calls, routing simple queries directly. Automated layers have roughly halved handling time. Human advisors now tackle harder cases the complex, vulnerable situations where scripts fail.
Workers whose knowledge was built on routine calls become the senior layer handling non-routine work. Redesign done right concentrates expertise where it matters most.
Not all 30,000 jobs have an obvious next step. Some workers want career transition; others were content with existing roles. The incoming Welsh Government must address what the state owes people whose livelihoods were shaped by yesterday’s policy choices and reshaped by today’s technology.