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What Zuckerburg has now announced, and what's happening in Philippines, makes clear how bad employment situation is set to get in countries like India 🙏🙏 Let me explain in depth. .. After its hiring binge during Covid, it had hit a peak employee base of ~90k folks. But, since the start of ’23, on a net basis, it had already cut ~20% of its employee base. And then in Oct ’24, it laid off even more people across WhatsApp, Reality Labs, Instagram etc, without specifying any nos. And now, it has announced layoffs for another 5% of existing employees today! 🙏🙏 .. Given it itself is a contender, company has obviously not pinned it on AI. -> But, ask the senior folks at Meta - AI is boosting efficiencies further than we could have imagined 2yrs ago, and more such layoffs will keep happening -> Organisations will keep getting more productive and efficient, making more of their employees redundant And who’ll suffer most? Countries, where lower wages are the biggest selling point - India, Philippines, Indonesia etc 🙏🙏 .. And it’s already happening in some industries, faster than in others. -> Take Philippines, where 2% of the population works in what’s the world’s No.2 hub for BPO activity after India, clocking $40bn in annual business -> As per the Govt there, about 10% of these BPO folks are set to be laid off by the end of 2025 itself -> Cuz, the BPO industry is becoming manifold efficient, error-free, human-free and low-cost, all at the same time, with rampant deployment of new-age AI tools which didn’t exist 2yrs ago And, if it will all be taken over by AI in the coming few years, why would Western companies come to the Philippines at all? .. And that’s where the situation becomes a big flashpoint for India as well. India has ~60% BPO mkt share, and employs tens of lakhs 🙏🙏 -> That will hit the purchasing power of a big set of earning population, which will also hit our already small base of tax-paying citizens -> Needless to say, the loans that these people would have availed for home, auto etc will be at risk of turning into NPA -> There will also be a big hit on the forex that India earns from BPO exports and uses for other essential imports Thus, this could be a major disruption, which we don’t often hear much about in our daily discourse, and probably merits more attention and action 🙏🙏