IBM Confirms Layoffs Amid Hiring

IBM Predicts Next 5 Life-Changing Tech Innovations

IBM confirmed Thursday that its $1 billion "workforce rebalancing" effort is underway, bringing layoffs to company offices around the globe even as the company is spending billions on new business ventures.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM announced the rebalancing plan in January after reporting lackluster financial results for 2013. The company's server business, in particular, has been hard hit, suffering an 18.7% year-over-year decline in revenue in 2013 while most other segments were either flat or showed only modest gains.

Workers in Burlington, Vt., and Rochester, Minn., were laid off on Thursday, according to Alliance@IBM, a Communications Workers of America union group attempting to win collective bargaining rights for IBM employees. The governor of Vermont confirmed the cuts, saying approximately 140 were expected to be laid off. Alliance@IBM has compiled reports of more than 3,300 layoffs in IBM offices abroad, including 1,500 reportedly let go in Brazil, 600 in Argentina, 480 in France, and 430 in Italy.

[Want more on IBM's 2013 results? Read IBM Plans Layoffs, New Investments.]

Detailed numbers are not yet available on US layoffs, but IBM issued a statement acknowledging that job actions are underway. "IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients and to pioneer new, high-value segments of the IT industry," the company stated. "To that end, IBM is positioning itself to lead in areas such as Cloud, Analytics, and Cognitive Computing and investing in these priority areas."

IBM pointed to a $1 billion investment in a new Watson unit that will be headquartered in New York City and a $1.2 billion expansion of its SoftLayer cloud operations. In a deal with the State University of New York College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, IBM announced on Monday that it will keep 3,100 high-tech jobs in upstate New York through 2016. In a separate deal with New York state, IBM is adding 500 employees at a state-owned technology center in Buffalo.

"At any given time, IBM has more than 3,000 job openings in these and other growth areas in the US," IBM stated.

Workforce rebalancing is an annual practice at IBM. A similar $1 billion effort in the second quarter of 2013 eliminated 6,500 to 8,000 positions across IBM's massive global workforce. IBM had 431,212 employees at the end of 2013, down less than 1% from a year earlier, but it was the company's first decline in employment in a decade.

Engage with Oracle president Mark Hurd, NFL CIO Michelle McKenna-Doyle, General Motors CIO Randy Mott, Box founder Aaron Levie, UPMC CIO Dan Drawbaugh, GE Power CIO Jim Fowler, and other leaders of the Digital Business movement at the InformationWeek Conference and Elite 100 Awards Ceremony, to be held in conjunction with Interop in Las Vegas, March 31 to April 1, 2014. See the full agenda here.