AN INTERNAL IBM document suggests that the firm will hire 14,000 workers in India this year, a number that's so close to the 13,000 people it will lay off in Europe and the US that sheer coincidence seems unlikely, even to the far from cynical.

The New York Times said it was passed the document by a the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, dated April this year.

But IBM told the newspaper that the job boost for India was a demonstration of how the economy there was thriving.

A senior VP told the NY Times that IBM wasn't engaging in "labour arbitrage". Only the most absurdly cynical would think that, surely