IT Outsourcing India

NEW YORK: IBM will cut about 5,000 jobs in the United States, adding to similarly large cuts in the past few months, sources with knowledge of the
matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

The job cuts will account for over 4 percent of IBM’s US workforce, which totaled around 115,000 at the end of 2008. The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said the cuts will mostly be in IBM’s global services business, which includes outsourcing and consulting services.

An International Business Machines Corp spokesman declined to comment. The company, which had a total workforce of 398,455 as of end 2008, has not disclosed how many jobs it has cut so far this year, but has said it was making "structural changes" to reduce spending and improve productivity.

IBM, which now earns around two-thirds of its revenue from outside the United States, has been expanding its workforce in emerging markets like India and China.

At the end of 2008, employment in the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China– totaled around 113,000.

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BANGALORE, India, (IPS/GIN) - The global recession appears likely to cost this information technology hub at least 50,000 jobs.

The Union of Information Technology Enabled Services (UNITES) Professionals, India, made that prediction for the first half of 2009.

Ever since United States majors like General Electric and American Express shifted their back office processing operations to India in 1994-96, the world’s major corporations, from the airlines to banking industries, resorted to business process outsourcing to this country, raising jobs from 553,000 in 2007 to the current 1.6 million.

Tight labor markets in the United States and Europe, linguistic capabilities, reliable and cheaper telephone communication and operational costs together with a government setup that encouraged foreign direct investment with tax breaks, have been major factors in the growth of the sector.

India’s information technology enabled services sector has been growing at a steady 30 percent rate over the past few years, and overall sales in 2007-2008 stood at $52 billion. But the slowdown in the U.S. and European markets has led to sudden job losses that have raised new labor issues.

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