'I pay them $2.50 per hour and they take a LOT off my plate': Inside the exploitative world of virtual assistants

While outsourcing work has been popular for years in industries ranging from manufacturing to customer service, the growth of remote work and new technological tools has allowed the virtual-assistant industry to take off in recent years. Virtual assistants help small-business owners with tasks like entering data, managing email, answering calls, creating client invoices, handling live chat support, and bolstering social-media engagement. Day said her VA helped her significantly grow her income in the past two years.

While being a virtual assistant involves many of the downsides of gig work — the uncertainty of scheduling, the lack of benefits — it allows people to work flexibly from anywhere in the world and doesn't typically require specific qualifications. A virtual assistant can also earn more than they might otherwise earn in their country, if they find the right clients to work with. Day told me her assistant, who's based in the UK, charges £30 an hour, or about $36.50 — about double the UK's median hourly national wage. She said she felt the rate was fair for how much her VA helped her business.

Other virtual assistants aren't as fortunate. Many entrepreneurs in Western countries are outsourcing tasks to workers in developing countries like the Philippines, where the lower cost of labor allows them to pay pennies on the dollar compared with what they'd pay for a local assistant. But while these entrepreneurs are reaping the benefits of inexpensive VAs to jump-start their businesses, many of the people whose skills they're profiting from are struggling to get by.

Virtual assistants are booming in the Philippines

While many developing countries have seen a boom in outsourced work generally, and virtual assistants in particular, one of the most popular countries for Westerners looking to hire VAs is the Philippines. While the biggest draw is the country's low cost of labor — a fraction of what small-business owners could find in the US or Europe — the Philippines also ranked highly in the 2021 Kearney Global Services Location Index, which assesses a country's ability to deliver digital services. The country also has a huge number of English speakers, thanks in part to its former status as a US colony. Now the Philippines' virtual-assistant industry is a popular subsector of the country's $29.5 billion business-process-outsourcing industry.

Many entrepreneurs in the West have been happy to take advantage of labor in the Philippines to grow their own businesses or simply make their lives easier. John Jonas, the founder of OnlineJobs.ph, a job board for virtual workers in the Philippines, first hired a Filipino VA in 2006. He indicated that he first tried to find a VA from India but ended up turning to the Philippines because of what he described as language and "cultural barriers."

"The Philippines is very Westernized. They watch American TV and movies. English is government-mandated as a primary language — often elementary school is taught in English. Communication isn't an issue at all," he told me. "They're honest, loyal, hardworking, and talented. They're generally not entrepreneurial, so they don't want to steal your business idea. There's this whole culture in the Philippines that makes it really different than elsewhere in the world."

Since Jonas launched OnlineJobs.ph in 2009, he said, it has become a leading platform for Filipino virtual assistants, with over 2 million profiles offering services. And Jonas isn't shy about his own use of Filipino VAs — or how much he pays them. Jonas employs 39 assistants in the Philippines who work for him full time. He pays them $500 to $2,100 a month, depending on their skills and roles. In 2021 he was featured in a YouTube video titled "How to Hire a Virtual Assistant for $2.50 an Hour With John Jonas."

A 38-year-old who lives in the UK and operates a business called NicheSiteLady used OnlineJobs.ph to hire a pair of VAs to help her run her business. She spoke on the condition of anonymity to prevent people from copying her websites. Her business makes about $35,000 a month from display ads and affiliate marketing, and she has previously sold one of her websites for a six-figure sum.

"I put a job advertisement up asking for virtual assistants with no experience who were keen to learn how to edit photos and upload content to WordPress. In under an hour, I got 300 applicants, and the job automatically closed," she told me. "I hired two part-time VAs so I would have a backup in case one didn't work out, but they're both great. I've given them lots of training using quick screen-sharing videos. Now that they have the required skills I've given them pay raises but am still paying less than what it would cost to hire someone local to me."

She argued in a Twitter thread in November that it was better to hire two virtual assistants instead of one because having competition between the VAs can coax out better performance. "Your VA doesn't want to be seen as the poor performer, so they may work harder knowing that someone else is doing the same job," she wrote. In a separate tweet she added, "I pay them $2.50 per hour and they take a LOT off my plate."

On his website, Jonas has similarly touted efficiency gains from Filipino VAs — and the low cost to hire them. Next to a picture of his smiling face, it reads: "Yes, because of my Filipino workers I get to play a lot of golf, spend a lot of time with my wife and kids, and get out backpacking in the middle of the week. I work for about 17 hours a week because of the amazing work they do. However it's not just better for us; it's better for them too."

'Exploitation at its finest'

Jonas' declaration that the setup is "better" for workers was roundly rejected during my conversations with Filipino VAs and experts. Cheryll Soriano, a communications professor at De La Salle University in Manila who studies the business-outsourcing industry, told me that while many people decide to become virtual assistants because they're lured in by stories of people making six-figure incomes, the people behind this narrative are selling often unattainable visions of success and possibility. "It's leading people to believe that maybe if I work hard, or maybe if I just accept tons and tons of projects and never sleep, I can get to that," she said.

One 25-year-old Filipino who works as a VA and search-engine-optimization writer described NicheSiteLady's tweets as "exploitation at its finest."

"Not only is she exploiting people, but she's also bragging about it online," the VA, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, said. "I'm glad many people called her out, though, yet others also support her, saying we're a third-world country and have a low minimum wage."

NicheSiteLady defended her pay practice, arguing that her rates are "double the minimum wage" in the Philippines. While there is no official hourly minimum wage in the country, and the daily minimum wage varies by region and industry, the daily minimum wage for nonagriculture industries in the capital, Manila, is about $10.30, or about $1.29 an hour for an eight-hour workday. She also said that she increases the rate as her VAs gain skills and that she's given them a full month's extra pay for the "13th-month" benefit all employers in the Philippines must pay their employees by December 24 each year.

"I can see why people think it's outrageous that people work for $2.50 per hour in some parts of the world at first glance," NicheSiteLady told me. "But what not everyone considers is that the cost of living is also much lower in countries like the Philippines."

But Kim, a 26-year-old Filipino VA who lives in Manila and has been working for clients in the US for the past four years, said people claiming that $2.50 an hour is a fair wage were missing important context. "When you work for a company in the Philippines, your company provides you with benefits. VAs don't have that," she tweeted in November. "VAs basically have to pay for their government benefits, healthcards, taxes, utilities esp. electricity, etc."

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found in 2019 that the Philippines had the highest electricity prices in Southeast Asia, and they have continued to rise. And like many countries, the Philippines is struggling with rising inflation; in November, the year-over-year inflation rate in the Philippines was 8%.

"I get paid hourly — as of now my rate is at $15 per hour minimum for basic management tasks," Kim told me. But this wasn't always the case. When she started working as a VA four years ago, she was working six to eight hours a day and earning only $300 each month, about half of which went to pay rent. "After computing all my expenses, I was left with none because electricity was taking up a big chunk of my pay and I had no savings," she said.

Soriano described the absence of benefits as a key issue in the virtual-assistant industry. She suggested that while workers often "extend effort to please a client" in hopes that the client will decide to pay them more or provide benefits like a work computer, clients are generally unlikely to do so simply because they like their assistant.

Kim said a lot of veteran assistants tell newbies to accept low-paid jobs for experience and suggest they find higher-paying clients while doing so. She said that while such a strategy could help early-career VAs gain a foothold, "it also hurts the VA industry in the long run — especially for future VAs when the current new ones continue to lowball themselves."

When I asked the 25-year-old VA what she believed a fair rate for Filipino VAs would be, she suggested "at least $10 an hour." She also argued that VAs in the Philippines should be paid based on the quality of work they deliver, at the rates that their Western employers pay their peers in the US and Europe, rather than on where they live. "We have the same if not better skills as workers in other countries do," she said. "Why do we have to receive a lower income just because?"

Paying virtual assistants similar rates, regardless of whether they're also in a Western country, is an obvious solution. Soriano also described a good client-worker relationship as "crucial." She suggested clients consider their workers as human beings instead of just resources, enrolling them for insurance, ensuring work hours are manageable, and considering time-zone differences when scheduling meetings.

"Virtual assistants work with a client constantly. So there's really an opportunity to build a humane relationship," Soriano said. "Many workers aspire to this. They find it very fulfilling when their clients become their friends. They really devote their time and energy to them. Those who feel fulfillment on the platforms are those who are treated well."

Aimee Pearcy is a freelance tech journalist based in the UK. She covers digital culture and the creator economy.