Call centres set to overtake farms and schools

NEWS More UK citizens will work with telephones than with crops, livestock and school children together by 2002, according to a report by Datamonitor. The report claims call centres will employ 465,000 full- and part-time agents within three years, while farming and teaching combined, will account for just 375,000. The report also predicted an explosion in Web-enabled call centres, from the current figure of 30 to over 900 by 2003. Evan Kirchheimer, analyst at Datamonitor, said: "We selected the teaching and farming industries to show the comparison between traditional employment and the emerging world of call centres." He added that after a short-term boom, the call centre market will "start to slow down over the next five to six years".