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Big Blue announces 15,000 new jobs
More good news for tech sector...

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Published: Monday 19 January 2004

IBM will hire 15,000 new employees - 50 per cent more than originally planned - in areas such as software and services because of a rebound in the economy, according to one top executive.

Big Blue, which has faced criticism for its plans to shift some US jobs to cheaper locations such as India and China, will add about 4,500 net jobs in the US this year, said Randy MacDonald, IBM's senior vice president for human resources.

"We are going to hire more in the US than we shift" overseas, MacDonald said in an interview.

About 30 per cent of the 15,000 new positions, or 4,500 jobs, will be net new hires in the US, he said.

In total, the move will increase IBM's workforce by nearly five per cent to about 330,000 or more depending on attrition. That number is the highest since 1991 when IBM began a decade-long overhaul under former Chief Executive Louis Gerstner.

More than half of IBM's employees are outside the US.

The company plans to move up to 3,000 jobs from the US to developing nations in 2004, an IBM spokesman said.

The raised hiring target follows news from the world's largest computer company that customers started buying more technology during the fourth quarter. IBM Chief Financial Officer John Joyce described 2004 on Thursday as "the year when the IT industry will begin its next growth cycle."