JPMorgan chief tackles US skills gap
Jamie Dimon's bank has no trouble hiring but is still leading an initiative to boost worker training
JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon has no problem finding skilled workers to hire. That's true even though his bank has run into all sorts of trouble with federal regulators, and it's true even though the firm fills tens of thousands of jobs around the world every year.
And yet - on a day last month when news broke that JPMorgan was preparing to spend US$2 billion to settle a federal investigation related to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme - Dimon went to Washington to unveil a five-year, US$250 million effort to boost worker training around the world.
The money will help local governments quantify the skills that local businesses need workers to acquire to help companies grow in the region. It will also help institutions such as community colleges ramp up their programmes to train prospective workers in those areas.
As Dimon said after the announcement, this "skills gap" - the complaint that businesses simply cannot find the workers they need to fill millions of open jobs (at a wage level that the businesses are willing to pay) - is something you hear a lot about from manufacturing and technology companies. Not so much from banks.
But Dimon estimated that such a gap might be holding back economic growth and keeping unemployment a percentage point or two higher than it otherwise could be.
He also said it was the classic role of a bank to help bridge those structural holes in the economy.