IBM to boost its US workforce

IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty said it would hire 25,000 people in the US over the next four years. She and other tech executives were to meet Donald Trump on Wednesday for talks on business strategies.

Rometty wrote in a "USA Today" piece that IBM would heavily invest in employee training and development. "We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving," Rometty said. "And that is also why so many of those jobs remain hard to fill."

"This is not about white-collar vs. blue-collar jobs, but about the new-collar jobs that employers in many industries demand," she added.

Toeing the line?

Rometty is a member of Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of US business leaders focused on boosting economic growth and jobs.

At the end of 2015, IBM had nearly 378,000 employees globally. While the firm does not break out staff numbers by country, a review of government filings suggests the company's US workforce declined in each of the five years through 2015.

At Wednesday's meeting, Trump is expected to push business leaders to create more jobs at home, but he may be stepping into hostile territory. The tech sector overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton during the election campaign and has expressed fears about the impact of Trump's push for protectionism.

hg/jd (AFP, Reuters)