NEW YORK (CNNfn) -
IBM plans to add about 15,000 jobs to its work force in 2004, but also plans to move some jobs off shore, a spokesman said Monday.
About 4,500 of those 15,000 jobs will be in the United States, the spokesman stated. He added that the company plans to relocate certain jobs to emerging nations, but no specific plans have been made.
The new jobs would bring IBM's employee level to 330,000.
The comments came in response to an article in The Wall Street Journal citing internal documents that showed IBM expects to save $168 million annually starting in 2006 by shifting several thousand high-paying programming jobs overseas.
The spokesman refused to confirm the existence of the documents cited in the story or the differences in wage rates that were quoted.
The documents said IBM was looking at shifting jobs to China, India and Brazil, where wages for skilled programmers are substantially lower than in the United States.
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