Should you hire a marketer from the Philippines?

When a Philippines-based marketer is a good fit

Two things make the Philippines a common pick for U.S. marketing teams: English and cost. The time zone is the trade-off.

• English. The Philippines ranks 28th of 123 countries and regions on the 2025 EF English Proficiency Index, with a score of 569 against a global average of 488. That’s a country average, so still test the person. Every GrowthPair candidate passes a C1 English test.
• Cost. A U.S. marketing specialist costs about $9,400 a month once benefits are added to the $78,760 federal median salary ($78,760 ÷ 0.70 ÷ 12). A full-time marketer through GrowthPair costs about $4,000 a month, all-in.
• Time zone. Your 9-to-5 falls overnight in Manila. Full overlap means a night shift for your hire, which works when the hours are fixed and agreed before day one.

Our take: for most channel roles, hiring a marketer in the Philippines is a good idea, as long as you agree on the hours before day one. Our founder’s first global hire, Anna, was from the Philippines, and that company grew and was acquired.

How to hire one

You have three routes. Find and pay the person yourself, use an employer of record to run payroll for someone you already found, or use a staffing firm that finds, vets, and pays them. Deel, Remote, and Oyster list employer of record fees of $599 to $699 a month before salary. For the side-by-side, see employer of record vs staffing agency.

The time difference, zone by zone

Philippine Standard Time is eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time, per PHIVOLCS, the government’s seismology agency. PAGASA, the national weather agency, keeps the official clock. The U.S. moves its clocks twice a year and the Philippines doesn’t, so the gap changes with the season.

Manila times fall on the next calendar day. Your Monday 9 a.m. in New York is Monday 10 p.m. in Manila in winter.

Arizona is the exception. NIST notes the state doesn’t observe daylight saving time, except the Navajo Nation, so most of Arizona stays 15 hours behind Manila all year.

When the gap moves in 2027

U.S. daylight time starts at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November, per NIST. In 2027, that’s March 14 and November 7.

Nothing changes in Manila on those dates. The IANA time zone database, which phones and calendars run on, shows the Philippines last used daylight saving in 1990. So when your clocks spring forward, a meeting that stays at 9 a.m. your time moves one hour earlier for your hire.

Two habits keep this painless:

• Anchor the shift to your time zone. Write it as "9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern" in the offer and the calendar invite. Your hire adjusts twice a year, and your standups never move.
• Send a reminder the week before each change. That’s the week someone shows up an hour early or late.

How to set the working shift

You have three real choices: your full workday, a partial overlap, or a normal Manila day with handoffs. Here’s how many hours each Manila shift overlaps with a U.S. 9-to-5. Each cell shows U.S. standard time first, then daylight time.

A normal daytime schedule in Manila gives you zero live hours in any U.S. zone. That works for production work with clear briefs, like design or editing, and it’s hard for anyone who runs channels or joins standups.

• Your full workday. Best for a marketer who runs paid ads, answers Slack, and joins your meetings. In Manila, that’s a night shift.
• A partial overlap. An evening shift gives an East Coast team four to five shared hours, enough for a standup, reviews, and live questions.
• Handoffs. Your hire works a Manila day, and you trade written briefs and recorded walkthroughs. Only use this when nothing needs a same-day answer.

Our take: if you’re hiring a marketer who owns a channel, go for full or near-full overlap. Ads, launches, and replies move during your business day, and a 12-hour wait for an answer slows everything down. If your team is on Pacific time and you want daytime hours on both sides, look at Latin America instead. Brazil’s main time zone sits four to five hours ahead of Pacific. See hiring a marketer from Brazil.

What to plan for on a night shift

A U.S.-hours schedule is a night schedule for your hire, and a few things change because of it.

• The week shifts by a day. Their week starts Monday night and ends Saturday morning. A Friday 5 p.m. Eastern request lands at 6 a.m. Saturday in Manila in winter.
• Keep the hours fixed. Moving a night shift around costs your hire sleep. Pick the hours and hold them.
• Book meetings in the middle of the shift. The first and last hour of a night shift is a bad slot for a strategy review.

Philippine holidays in 2027

Proclamation No. 1427, signed September 8, 2026, sets the 2027 national holidays. GMA News and PhilstarLIFE both reported the full list on September 11, 2026.

Eid’l Fitr and Eid’l Adha get separate proclamations once their dates are set.

Name the U.S. date, too. For a hire working your hours overnight, one Manila holiday overlaps two of your shifts, so say which of your workdays they’ll be off.

Decide the holiday calendar before day one and write it down: their holidays, yours, or a fixed number of days off.

Where GrowthPair fits

Every GrowthPair marketer works full-time for one client, in that client’s time zone. For a Philippines-based hire, that means your workday, and your standups on your clock. A full-time Growth Marketer costs about $4,000 a month, all-in, which covers the marketer’s pay, payroll, benefits, and HR. The rate also covers monthly stipends for health, Wi-Fi, and education, and 10 paid holidays a year on the NYSE calendar. Our talent is in Latin America and the Philippines, and most teams have their hire working in about 3 weeks.