IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is poised to create “new collar” jobs – high-tech work in healthcare and other sectors – designed for a new economy.

Just before she prepared to meet with President-elect Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower for a December 13 summit with other tech titans, Rometty announced IBM was prepared to an armada of new workers.

“We have thousands of open positions at any given moment, and we intend to hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States, 6,000 of those in 2017,” Rometty wrote in a letter published in USA Today on December 13.

Rometty added that IBM would invest $1 billion in training and development of its U.S. employees over the next four years.

She noted that new collar jobs might not require a traditional college degree, adding that as many as a third of employees at IBM don't have a four-year degree.

[Also: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty to keynote HIMSS17]

“What matters most is that these employees – with jobs such as cloud computing technicians and services delivery specialists – have relevant skills, often obtained through vocational training,” she wrote.

Rometty’s USA Today letter echoed a letter she sent Trump on November 14 in which she congratulated him for winning the presidential election.

Rometty’s correspondence drew some criticism, then and now, with some publications and IBM employees noting that IBM had scaled back thousands of positions over recent years.

At the December 13 tech summit, was among other tech titans: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Rometty will continue to have Trump’s ear on these workforce matters as one of 16 business executives who form Trump’s “Strategic and Policy Forum,” a group selected to advise him on job creation.

She is one of two women selected for the panel. The other is Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors. A familiar figure to Healthcare IT News readers is also on the panel: Toby Cosgrove, MD, Cleveland Clinic CEO. 

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

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This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

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