Trump Era: IBM Unveils Plan to Employ 25,000 Americans Ahead of Meeting with Trump

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As US President-elect Donald Trump prepares to meet with industry leaders, Technology giant, IBM has unveiled plans to employ up to 25,000 Americans.

IBM CEO, GInni Rometty laying out her vision for filling technology jobs in America, which includes plans to hire 25,000 people in the US over the next four years.

IBM’s announcement is coming as Trump ramps up effort to fulfil his promise of creating jobs. During the run-up to the election, Trump made employment issues a mainstay of his campaign, promising to scrap trade deals he viewed as draining jobs from the country and impose tariffs on imports if necessary. He has since claimed credit for preventing thousands of manufacturing jobs from moving overseas and used state incentives to strike a deal with Carrier, a unit of United Technologies Corp., to pull back on its plans to move some operations to Mexico.

Rometty is on Trump’s business advisory. She will be joined on Wednesday by Facebook Inc.’s Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos and Alphabet Inc.’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

IBM’s move is in line with emerging pattern of technology companies pledging to create jobs and invest billions of dollars in the US. This is in line with Trump’s vision of preventing job transfer overseas.

The advantage for companies is that it can deflect criticism from the new administration that the industry is shifting jobs offshore, while also giving Trump a way to take credit for job creation goals that may have little to do with his election.

Over the past few years, IBM, like many large U.S.-based companies, has been criticized for eliminating thousands of jobs in the country and moving resources to places such as India. The company reported fewer employees at the end of 2013 than the beginning of the year for the first time in a decade, and reduced its total workforce by 12 percent the next year. IBM said it hired more U.S. employees last year than it had in the five years prior.

In a recent article Rometty wrote in USA today, she encouraged government to invest in vocational education and training as many technology jobs don’t even require advanced University degrees.

According to Rometty, “We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving,” Rometty wrote. That’s also why many of the jobs are hard to fill, she said. “What matters most is that these employees – with jobs such as cloud computing technicians and services delivery specialists – have relevant skills, often obtained through vocational training.”

Bloombers says IBM has had its plans in the pipeline before the election of Trump. Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines Corp. has been working on hiring for and preparing its employees in skills required to adapt to the newer areas of its business, such as cloud computing, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. For example, about a third of its workforce will have learned by the end of this year design thinking, a problem-solving method favored by many tech startups.

 

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