IBM plans to hire 25,000 employees in the US

new york — US technology giant IBM said on Tuesday it would hire 25,000 people in the country over the next four years, a day before President-elect Donald Trump met with tech industry leaders.

About 6,000 of those hirings will occur in 2017, IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty said in an opinion article in USA Today. IBM will invest $1 billion on employee training and development in the next four years, said the IBM president, chairman and CEO.

“We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving — and that is also why so many of these jobs remain hard to fill,” Rometty said. “Jobs are being created that demand new skills — which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting.”

“This is not about white collar vs blue collar jobs, but about the ‘new collar’ jobs that employers in many industries demand, but which remain largely unfilled.” jobs will be created in 2017

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

The IBM jobs investment news came before the meeting on Wednesday of the Republican property tycoon-turned-next US president and the leaders of several major technology companies.

Among those expected to attend are Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Larry Page of Alphabet (Google) and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX. — AFP