Hard to believe for some but those slave jobs in the middle east, hundreds of thousands of filipinos compete for those jobs. Many pay blood sucking recruiting agencies to just be considered for the jobs(who also take a cut from you pay as well).

Web or related IT work in the Philippines would be 1/4th or 1/5th of what we could potentially make overseas(average around $500usd/month) but pay is just part of the equation. There are only a handful of these good jobs to go around and those who are lucky enough to land them(nepotism or connections) don't make enough to get from paycheck to paycheck based on the cost of living. You are also expected to work long hours and weekends. With transportation(2-3 hour commute on public transportation), meals, uniforms, and misc other expenses your employer expects you to pay without reimbursement you end up in the red(hence the cup of rice and lube analogy earlier). This on top of the crime, social injustice, political instability, natural disasters, family expectations and many more reasons makes work overseas or immigrating the only way.

Thanks though to that taboo topic for many here outsourcing, a lot of IT pros end up working at call centers not just as tech support but as sales reps, travel agents, or customer service reps for english speaking countries which pays even less(avg $300usd). So you westerners who call to your banks customer service to cancel a credit card or call a magazine publisher to start a subscription, ask the person at the end of the line help you root your phone or configure a routing table on you home router. Unemployment may seem low(7%) but underemployment is astronomical because people need to eat and will take any job available.

TL;DR Yeah it sucks being a slave overseas, but at least I could feed my family back home.