IBM local job numbers fall to new low
IBM's total Dutchess County headcount fell to its lowest in decades in early 2014.
A report made by the company and obtained by the Poughkeepsie Journal revealed a count of 6,897 at the end of February, down 10 percent from one year earlier. That was 771 jobs gone off the IBM payroll.
People working at IBM Corp.'s plants in Dutchess are not yet a vanishing breed, but they are a diminishing one. IBM remains the largest employer.
IBM's workforce is in one of the best-paying sectors, using Department of Labor data showing manufacturing overall paid an average in 2013 of $102,164. That category, in Dutchess, is mostly IBM. Back in 2011, a more-focused category was reported, electronic product manufacturing, with an annual average pay then of $116,339. The Labor Department lumps categories together to preserve the confidentiality it offers to each employer.
The economic impact of losing high-paying jobs is significant, but hard to measure.
"It's just impossible to tell," said Ed Kellogg, chairman of Dutchess County Economic Development Corp. Often, "People get laid off but they end up the very next day doing the same job but as a private contractor. They're off the radar screen in terms of IBM jobs."
But those after-IBM jobs are often temporary and come with less money, said Lee Conrad, national coordinator of worker group Alliance@IBM. "Generally when that does happen, the worker doesn't make out. The pay scale could be less. The benefits could be less, or a shorter term, less hours."
Downsizings are nothing new for IBM, which employed more than 31,000 people in the mid-Hudson in the mid-1980s. The biggest cuts occurred in the 1990s, hitting 9,800 in 1996. This was followed by a modest rally to the range of 10,000 to 12,000 and a decade of relative stability.
But then a new slide began. This year's drop extended to eight years a run of declining employment that rose only in 2012 but since has continued to slip. This year's drop is mostly from a major downsizing announced in June 2013 and implemented mostly in September, totaling 697 jobs.
So, the drop did not surprise Conrad.
"It's probably due to a combination of things: layoffs, people leaving the company and force-outs," he said. "They offered a deal for people who were going to retire. They'd be immune to job cuts, if they promised to leave."
IBM's explanation then was very general, about shifting business needs and where the emphasis should be.
"IBM is investing in growth areas for the future: Big Data, cloud computing, social business and the growing mobile computing opportunity," spokesman Doug Shelton said. "The company has always invested in transformational areas, and as a result we need to remix our skills so IBM can lead in these higher-value segments in both emerging markets and in more mature economies."
The current data on local headcount came from IBM, but not in a statement to the media. IBM abandoned that practice in 2009. And in 2010, it stopped reporting how many people it employed in the United States.
However, IBM still reports jobs data when some law or deal requires it. The Dutchess County Industrial Development Agency gives IBM a tax break on an unusual tax, a sales tax that's triggered when IBM sells something to itself, like transferring a mainframe computer to the services segment. It gets 3.75 percentage points knocked off the tax under this deal. More percentage points could be dropped if IBM jobs exceeded an 11,662-job trigger point. But with shrinking headcount, IBM is a long way from getting a bigger break.
Craig Wolf: 845-437-4815; cwolf@poughkeepsie
journal.com; Twitter: @craigwolfPJ
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