Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024.
The era of artificial intelligence on Wall Street, and its impact on workers, has begun.
Big banks including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are unveiling plans to reimagine their businesses around AI, technology that allows for the mass production of knowledge work.
That means that even during a blockbuster year for Wall Street as trading and investment banking spins off billions of dollars in excess revenue — not typically a time the industry would be keeping a tight lid on head count — the companies are hiring fewer people.
JPMorgan said Tuesday in its third-quarter earnings report that while profit jumped 12% from a year earlier to $14.4 billion, head count rose by just 1%.
The bank's managers have been told to avoid hiring people as JPMorgan deploys AI across its businesses, CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts.
JPMorgan is the world's biggest bank by market cap and a juggernaut across Main Street and Wall Street finance. Last month, CNBC was first to report about JPMorgan's plans to inject AI into every client and employee experience and every behind-the-scenes process at the bank.
The bank has "a very strong bias against having the reflexive response to any given need to be to hire more people," Barnum said Tuesday. JPMorgan had 318,153 employees as of September.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg this month that AI will eliminate some jobs, but that the company will retrain those impacted and that its overall head count could grow.