IBM to Obama: $30B in Stimulus Will Create 90,000 Tech-Tied Jobs

IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano advised Obama aides last month that $30 billion in government investments to expand broadband access, digitize healthcare records and enhance the electrical grid could create more than 900,000 U.S. jobs.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, IBM research shows:

Investing $10 billion in broadband networks to provide high-speed Internet access to areas that lack it, would create 498,000 new jobs in a year. Investing $10 billion in computerizing health-care records and other health-related IT would create 212,000 jobs. The government investment would come on top of $30 billion in public and private investment in health-care IT already slated for this year

IBM also calculated that $10 billion invested in equipment that allows electric utilities to monitor their transmission infrastructure more closely would create 239,000 jobs. Such technology can tell operators when transformers are failing or wires are overloaded.

Follow the Money to Companies Hiring Technology Professionals

Want to know where to find jobs in this recession? Look at the firms where venture capitalists are investing.

Venture capitalist Trevor Loy invests in technology companies that haven’t stopped growing, according to a story posted on the McClatchy news service website. And, he says, these firms haven’t stopped hiring. "The end markets they serve are not shrinking," Loy said of some of the more than two-dozen companies he funds. According to the story:

They're part of a select swath of the U.S. economy that's been protected—so far—from the bad economic weather. They're schools and health-care providers, information-technology firms and green energy start-ups and other firms that, while not thriving, are at least still hiring.

Indeed, healthcare concerns and companies creating solutions to reduce carbon emissions are among ventures most in need of IT know-how.

GE Healthcare CollaborationsBode Well for IT Professionals

More evidence that healthcare IT will provide increasing job opportunities in the coming years for IT professionals comes from GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt (left). In a conference call with analysts this week, Immelt discusses how increased collaboration with healthcare institutions will help grow the company’s healthcare IT business that includes high-tech diagnostic imaging, treatment and other wares:

”The trick is in the United States to position our $1.8 billion healthcare information technology business, which I think through some of the collaborations, we're forming with Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Health people like that is very well positioned now in the electronic health record to position this business to really grow rapidly as the government sets new standards and gives hospitals some capability to invest in this activity. … The story is going to be about productivity and efficiency.”

And, among those investments will be IT know-how. How else to connect all these healthcare devices with electronic medical record systems?

Technology Jobs Seen Emanating from Healthcare Modernization

An Obama administration economic stimulus package worth up to $1 trillion could help IT employment in healthcare.

That's the prognosis offered by the career site Jobfox. The top jobs to modernize U.S. healthcare would include IT, bioinformatics and information security specialists as well as software developers, Jobfox says.

Stimulus projects to construct roads, bridges, transit and rural broadband would include, Jobfox guesses, computer-aided drafting specialists and telecommunications engineers among the top jobs.