Arizona is home to nearly 90,000 call-center workers, and many of them are now wondering how much longer their jobs will exist as artificial intelligence takes over tasks that once required a human voice on the line. AI systems already handle hotel reservations, repair tickets and customer service calls in some operations, leaving workers to question whether their roles will survive as the technology keeps improving.
John Seeley, who represents call-center workers in Arizona, said hundreds of thousands of people work in Valley back-office or call-center environments, and he warned that AI could have a devastating impact on the region without a safety net or a way for customers to speak to a real person. According to Seeley, Arizona call-center jobs face pressure from both overseas competition and artificial intelligence, a squeeze that is adding pressure to the industry, as reported by AZ Family.
The anxiety in Arizona mirrors a national trend. The U.S. had roughly 2.8 million customer service jobs in 2024, according to finance.yahoo.com, and that workforce is projected to shrink by about 5.5% by 2034 — a net loss of roughly 150,000 jobs. Customer service job postings on Indeed are already about 10% below prepandemic levels, the outlet reports, a sign that hiring in the field has been cooling even before AI adoption accelerated.
Corporate Cuts Already Underway
Some companies have already moved. Uber cut about 10% of its customer support team as part of a broader push that included embracing AI tools, per the same finance.yahoo.com account. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has said AI enabled his company to cut 4,000 customer support roles, though that figure carries only medium confidence in the reporting.
Forecasts for how deep the cuts could go vary sharply depending on who is doing the counting. Finance.yahoo.com cites Forrester's prediction that nearly half of customer service jobs will be lost to AI by 2030, while customerexperiencedive.com describes the same Forrester forecast as AI slashing the number of customer service jobs in half by that year. Either way, Forrester expects high-volume contact centers — those fielding hundreds of thousands of inquiries a month — to see the steepest staffing reductions, the outlet notes.
Not every analyst expects total upheaval, however. Gartner does not anticipate any Fortune 500 company will fully eliminate human customer service by 2028, and the firm predicts that half of the companies that do cut staff because of AI will eventually rehire workers for similar functions, according to finance.yahoo.com. Customerexperiencedive.com adds that Forrester expects new customer service manager positions overseeing both AI systems and human staff, and that some contact centers may never hit their projected automation targets because of poor data, missing system integrations and highly variable workflows.
Senators Push the FCC for Guardrails
On the policy side, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego and West Virginia Senator Jim Justice are pushing the Federal Communications Commission for changes they say are needed as AI use spreads through the industry. The two senators want customers to know when they are talking to an overseas call center and to have the option to reach a U.S.-based human, along with a human option when dealing with AI systems generally.
Gallego and Justice have said artificial intelligence is not going away, but they want guardrails around its use — especially when it comes to replacing workers and handling sensitive customer information. Their push lines up with federal rulemaking already in motion: proposed FCC rules would require start-of-call disclosures alerting customers when a call is routed overseas and give them the option to switch to a U.S.-based agent, according to blog.contactcenterpipeline.com. The same proposal would bar offshore handling of sensitive information such as passwords, Social Security numbers and payment details, and it was published in the Federal Register on April 23, 2026.
The proposal has not gone unopposed. The National Retail Federation wrote to the FCC on April 21, 2026, urging regulators to shelve the rule, warning that restrictions meant to preserve domestic jobs could backfire by pushing companies toward faster automation and fewer human roles overall. Blog.contactcenterpipeline.com also notes that Belize's business-process-outsourcing sector has become a significant source of service-industry jobs in recent years, underscoring how offshore markets have grown to fill the demand that any onshoring rule would try to claw back.
For Arizona workers like the ones Seeley represents, the outcome of that federal debate could shape whether AI becomes a tool that manages alongside people or one that replaces them outright. For now, the uncertainty remains the defining feature of the job.
