IBM promises to hire Americans ahead of Trump meeting

IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty pledged to hire and train workers in the United States ahead of a Wednesday gathering where she and other technology executives will meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

“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,” Rometty said in a USA Today editorial published on Tuesday afternoon.

IBM spokesman Adam Pratt declined to say how that hiring might be offset by staff reductions or disclose how many people IBM employs in the United States.

“We expect to end 2016 with our U.S. workforce about the same size as it was at the beginning of the year. By 2020, we expect it to be larger than it is today,” Pratt said.

Rometty also said that IBM intends to invest $1 billion in training and development of its U.S. employees over the next four years. Pratt declined to say if that represented an increase over spending in the prior four years.

Rometty is one of more than a dozen U.S. executives serving on an advisory council that Trump has formed to consult him on job creation.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Andrew Hay)