IBM has been laying off a substantial number of employees this week and is trying to keep it quiet, sources have said.

One IBM employee has said that IBM Cloud experienced “a massive layoff” in the past few days that affected thousands of people.

“Unlike traditional layoffs, this one was done in secret,” the insider said. “My manager told me that they were required to sign an NDA not to talk about the specifics.”

Multiple posts on layoff-focused message boards and corroborating accounts with other sources familiar with the IT giant’s operations suggest the cuts are large.

Asked to confirm the layoffs, an IBM spokesperson said, “Early this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single digit percentage of IBM’s global workforce, and we still expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with.”

IBM’s first-quarter 2024 earnings report said that the mainframe goliath took a $400 million “workforce rebalancing” charge to cover the cost of planned layoffs. That’s after a $300 million “workforce rebalancing” charge in 2023. At the beginning of 2023, IBM announced plans to cut 3,900 jobs.

With about 288,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2023, the “very low single digit percentage” possibilities for 2024 might be 1 percent (2,880 layoffs), 2 percent (5,760 layoffs), 3 percent (8,640 layoffs), or more. Assuming a fixed cost per employee, last year’s charge and job cut disclosure suggests about 5,200 positions would be eliminated with a $400 million charge.

Last year, CEO Arvind Krishna said IBM expected to replace around 7,800 jobs with AI, though no specific time frame was provided. His corporation’s stock price is up 33 percent year to date to $215 a share.

IBM’s spokesperson did not respond when asked to be more specific about the number of layoffs and to explain where new roles were being hired to maintain a flat headcount.

According to the source, the job cuts have been directed mainly at senior-level programmers, sales, and support.

This individual’s job is headed to India, we’re told, reflecting a hiring freeze in the US. But hiring is said to be ongoing in India.

IBM has a history of moving jobs to India.

As with prior layoffs, or “resource actions” to use IBM’s euphemism, we’re told those affected are substantially in the 50-55 age bracket with 20-24 years of seniority.

“It seems exclusively people in L7 and L8 and L9 bands, at the top of the band in payment structure,” the insider said.

Despite numerous past and ongoing age discrimination lawsuits, IBM maintains it does not systematically discriminate on the basis of age.

AI might not be coming for all jobs, but it might be coming for some.

UPS’s largest layoff in its 116-year history was the result of, in part, new technologies, including AI, CEO Carol Tomé said during an earnings call in February. Meanwhile, IBM plans to pause hiring for roles it thinks could soon be automated by AI, CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg last year.

Workers aren’t optimistic about the future. In a recent survey from McKinsey, 25% of business professionals said that they expect their employer to lay off staff as a result of AI adoption. And, well, their pessimism isn’t misplaced. According to one estimate, around 4,000 workers have lost their jobs to AI since May. And in a poll from Beautiful.ai, which makes AI-powered presentation software, nearly half of managers said that they’re hoping to replace workers with AI.

But a cohort of Big Tech vendors and consultancies — called the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium (ITC) — aims to push back against the notion that AI will lead to job losses, citing the need for re-skilling and upskilling within the information and communication technology (ICT) industry specifically.

The ITC is being led by Cisco with support from Google, Microsoft, IBM (conspicuously), Intel, SAP and Accenture. The ITC’s mandate is to explore AI’s impact on jobs while enabling people to find AI-related training programs and connecting businesses to “skilled and job-ready” workers, a spokesperson said in a briefing.

“The ITC’s unique approach will research and evaluate the impact of AI on specific job roles, including skills and tasks, and recommend training for an AI-enabled ICT workforce,” the spokesperson said. “Consortium members and advisers share a common perspective that a greater sense of urgency is required to understand the impact of AI on key job roles within the ICT Industry.”

In the first phase of its work, the ITC will evaluate the impact of AI on 56 ICT job roles and provide training recommendations for the roles affected. These 56 roles, which the ITC hasn’t disclosed yet, were selected for their “strategic significance” in the broader ICT ecosystem and AI’s impact on the tasks required to perform the roles, the spokesperson said, as well as roles that offer “promising entry points” for low-level workers.

“These job roles include 80% of the top 45 ICT job titles garnering the highest volume of job postings for the period February 2023–2024 in the U.S. and five of the largest European countries by ICT workforce numbers (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands),” the spokesperson said. “Collectively, these countries account for a significant segment of the ICT sector, with a combined total of 10 million ICT workers.”

The ITC intends to publish its findings in a report this summer. And, beyond that, it hasn’t quite figured out a roadmap.

“The Consortium will determine its ‘phase 2’ scope in mid-2024,” the spokesperson said. “As we progress towards phase 2, the Consortium may consider extending invitations to other organizations and institutions to join our collaborative efforts in supporting the success of an AI-enabled ICT workforce.”

And therein lies the problem with industry consortiums like this.

If the goal is to allay fears of a mass AI threatening of livelihoods, tech incumbents will need to deliver a lot more than vague promises and reports. IBM has pledged to skill 2 million people in AI by 2030; Intel has said it’ll upskill over 30 million with AI in the same timeframe.

“Consortium members have established forward-thinking goals with skills development and training programs to positively impact over 95 million individuals around the world over the next 10 years,” the spokesperson said.

Yet it’s not clear how many AI roles will be available then.

According to a recent analysis by Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, the demand for AI roles is decreasing, not increasing. In 2022, AI-related positions made up 2% of all job postings in the U.S. In 2023, that figure dipped to 1.6%.

“Consortium members commit to developing worker pathways particularly in job sectors that will increasingly integrate artificial intelligence technology,” the spokesperson said. “It’s a voluntary and transparent effort across companies to assess the impact and identify paths for upskilling and reskilling of technology roles most likely to be impacted by AI … We intend for this work to produce real, tangible recommendations that will address business and worker needs.”