IBM Reported to Have Quietly Cut Thousands of Jobs

According to a recent article on the Associated Press, IBM is said to have cut thousands of jobs, without the company officially announcing any specific and official details. The layoffs are reported to be part of the company's ongoing plan to save costs amid the current low global economy.

IBM is said to have cut approximately 4000 jobs (according to some reports) over the past week. The company's sales, software and hardware divisions are reported to have suffered from personnel reductions. The Armonk, N.Y-based company claims that the job cuts are just part of its ongoing efforts to monitor costs. However, it won't release any specific numbers, as it doesn't have to reveal the number of jobs it is cutting, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, which requires companies to disclose only “material” events. Even so, layoffs are reported at several of the company's locations, including Tucson, Ariz., San Jose, Calif., Rochester, Minn., Research Triangle Park, N.C., East Fishkill, N.Y., Austin, Texas, and Burlington, Vt.

Several companies in the IT industry have already felt the impact of the global economic crisis, having publicly announced their plans of cutting a number of jobs, as part of ongoing efforts to reduce costs. Companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Sprint Nextel and Google have announced job cuts in total of 20,000. HP, one of IBM's main rivals, is expected to lay off 24,600 of its employees, approximately 8 percent of the company's total workforce.

According to some estimates, IBM's layoffs are somewhere in the number of 4000, since the company announced its fourth-quarter earnings. According to a document reviewed by the Associated Press, IBM has reduced its workforce by 3000 employees, meaning that the numbers are yet to be officially confirmed.