IBM announced to lay off thousands of its employees from the global workforce recently. But CEO Arvind Krishna struck a different note, saying the company will continue to hire more college graduates. “People are talking about either layoffs or freezing hiring, but I actually want to say that we are the opposite,” Krishna told CNN last week. “I expect we are probably going to hire more people out of college over the next 12 months than we have in the past few years, so you’re going to see that.”Krishna acknowledged that automation would inevitably lead to some reductions but stated that “on the net mix, it’s a plus for us.” He also shared advice for young graduates to focus on the right skills for the AI era. “Skills of people are really important,” Krishna said adding “We need skills in AI. We need skills in quantum. We need skills that our clients feel really good about technology being deployed in their environment.”

IBM to cut thousands of jobs globally

Last week, IBM announced that it will layoff thousand of employees from its global workforce in the fourth quarter in 2025. As reported by CNBC, this latest round of job cuts of the company will impact thousands of employees as the company continues to move towards high-margin software and artificial intelligence services. “In the fourth quarter we are executing an action that will impact a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce,” an IBM spokesperson told CNBC. “While this may impact some U.S.-based roles, we anticipate that our U.S. employment will remain flat year over year.”IBM has the global headcount of approximately 2,70,000 employees at the end of 2024, so if the company plans even to layoff 1% of its employees then it will impact around 2,700 employees.