IBM unveils plan to create 25,000 jobs in U.S. during Donald Trump presidency

Computer technology giant IBM announced Tuesday that it plans to create more than 25,000 jobs in the United States during the four years of President-elect Donald Trump's presidency.

According to IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty, who wrote an op-ed for USA Today on Tuesday, approximately 6,000 of those new hires will occur over the next year as the company will begin a $1 billion investment into employee training and development.

"We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving — and that is also why so many of these jobs remain hard to fill," Rometty wrote. "As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills — which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting."

"This is not about white collar vs. blue collar jobs, but about the 'new collar' jobs that employers in many industries demand, but which remain largely unfilled," she added, noting that as many as one-third of all IBM employees lack a formal college degree.

"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," Rometty wrote.

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The IBM jobs investment news came before the highly anticipated meeting Wednesday of the Republican property tycoon-turned-next US president and the leaders of several major technology companies.

Among those expected to attend are Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Larry Page of Alphabet (Google) and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, according to US media.

According to reports, Trump is expected to urge the technology leaders to stop outsourcing their labor to other countries while also creating more jobs stateside. Trump has already asked Apple's Cook to open a large factory in the U.S. to begin manufacturing iPhone and other Apple products in America.

If Trump is able to get the top American technology leaders on board with his plan to "make America great again," then things are definitely looking up over the next four years. And IBM's pledge to create 25,000 American jobs is definitely a step in the right direction.