Unfortunately, job losses are not limited to the electronics industry — experts believe that Intel was only the beginning, and more companies in the Philippines will be laying workers off. Furthermore, OFWs themselves are being hit with layoffs, the worst of which was the loss of jobs of around 3000 workers in Taiwan.

The silver lining in this landscape of layoff despair is that the local IT (the internet and software part of it, not the hardware part) as well as the BPO industries are faring well, with some experts believing that the jobless can be absorbed by these industries altogether:

According to Lauro Vives, president and chief executive of research of XMG Asia Pacific, the IT and BPO sectors can absorb the displaced workers, provided they have the required skills.

Lack of jobs should not be a problem for the Philippines as there are activities that are in the pipeline in the IT and BPO sectors in the next few months, he said.[Inquirer.net]

This news was inadvertently supported by Citibank, which announced a significant expansion of so-called “knowledge process outsourcing” division in the Philippines.

Not all is bright and dandy in those industries either, however. In the same article, Accenture confirmed an earlier announcement that it laid some 500 Filipino workers off. It’s confusing, however, on whether those 500 were part of the call center group (as reported in the above article) or the solutions group (as rumored here).

And if you think the call center industry is safe, think again: late last year, Dell has started moving call centers back to the United States after constant customer complaints of having difficulty talking with Filipino and Indian call center agents. While the service has a higher price than Dell’s regular customer support services, it underscores the not-so-obvious fragility of the call center industry and how American customers receive non-American customer support agents.

Indeed the only lesson that we can learn above is that there’s no such thing as a safe haven in the world economic crisis that we’re experiencing today. There’s simply no way to play it safe, and perhaps it’s because it’s just not possible. In fact, some people survived and prospered by playing riskier cards in tough economic times, and some of the biggest local enterprises were born in the middle of the most dire periods in history (National Bookstore was established during World War II, and Jollibee started in the shadow of Martial Law, for example).

What is clear, however, is that a person has to keep his eyes peeled and his ear close to the ground, because in tough economic times, standing still and oblivious will be the surest way to perish.