IBM begins layoffs amid push toward AI

By Jon Swartz

IBM Corp. on Tuesday notified employees in its marketing and communications division that it's making cuts, the latest large tech company to trim its payroll.

The company (IBM) made the announcement in a short meeting with staff, according to a CNBC report.

IBM had strongly indicated a workforce reduction in January, when it announced its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results.

"In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM's global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with," a company spokesperson said in a statement to MarketWatch. "This rebalancing is driven by increases in productivity and our continued push to align our workforce with the skills most in-demand among our clients, especially areas such as AI and hybrid cloud."

Also read: No more free lunches: How laid-off tech workers are surviving a tight job market

Last year, IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said the venerable tech pioneer was "massively upskilling all of our employees on AI" as it replaces nearly 8,000 jobs with AI.

Nearly 50,000 tech jobs have been slashed this year, with Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOGL) (GOOG) Google, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Salesforce Inc. (CRM), and eBay Inc. (EBAY) among those making cuts.

-Jon Swartz

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03-12-24 1642ET

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