Major Wall Street banks are signaling a fundamental shift in their workforce strategies as generative AI transforms the financial services industry. During their fourth-quarter earnings calls this week, CEOs from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley provided unprecedented insight into how artificial intelligence will reshape employment at their institutions.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon delivered his characteristically blunt assessment: “It will eliminate jobs. People should stop sticking their heads in the sand.” However, Dimon noted that AI could also create new roles, particularly in cybersecurity where banks need AI to counter sophisticated fraud. CFO Jeremy Barnum emphasized that the bank wants employees’ first reaction to be something other than “hire more people,” while consumer business head Marianne Lake projected that operations staff could be 40% to 50% more productive over the next five years, leading to slower net head count growth.
Goldman Sachs took concrete action, with CEO David Solomon, President John Waldron, and CFO Denis Coleman announcing in a 2025 memo that the firm will “constrain head count growth through the end of the year, in addition to a limited reduction in roles across the firm.” Solomon clarified the strategy is to use AI to cut costs and “free up capacity to invest in other areas,” focusing hiring on “high-value people” who can expand the firm’s client-facing capabilities.
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, leading a multi-year turnaround to save $2.5 billion and cut 20,000 jobs, told employees that with AI and automation, “some jobs will change, some will emerge, and others will no longer be required.” She highlighted that AI-driven automated code reviews have created 100,000 hours of weekly capacity at the bank.
Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf was equally direct, stating that “anyone who sits here today and says that they don’t think they’ll have less head count because of AI either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or is just not being totally honest.” The bank has already shrunk head count by over 25% since Q2 2020, and Scharf reported that generative AI tools have made engineers 30% to 35% more productive.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan revealed the bank has saved the equivalent of 2,000 coding positions by using AI to take 30% out of the coding process. The bank’s AI assistant Erica now saves approximately 11,000 full-time equivalent positions. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley CFO Sharon Yeshaya described replacing human verification teams with AI, noting “we now have one human team and one AI team.”
Key Quotes
It will eliminate jobs. People should stop sticking their heads in the sand.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon made this blunt statement at a Fortune conference in December, cutting through industry euphemisms about AI’s impact on employment and establishing himself as one of the most direct voices on the topic.
Anyone who sits here today and says that they don’t think they’ll have less head count because of AI either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or is just not being totally honest about it.
Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf delivered this pointed criticism in November, calling out other executives for avoiding difficult truths about AI’s workforce impact. He later clarified that most leaders know head count will decline but are “afraid to say it.”
We will constrain head count growth through the end of the year, in addition to a limited reduction in roles across the firm.
This statement from a Goldman Sachs memo signed by CEO David Solomon, President John Waldron, and CFO Denis Coleman represents one of the most concrete commitments from a major bank to actually reduce positions due to AI implementation.
Using the AI techniques, we’ve taken 30% out of the coding part of the stream of introducing a new product. That saves us about 2,000 people.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan provided specific metrics on AI’s impact during the bank’s fourth-quarter earnings call, demonstrating that productivity gains are already translating into measurable workforce reductions in technical roles.
Our Take
What’s most striking about these earnings call revelations is the synchronized timing and messaging. Wall Street’s leadership appears to have collectively decided that 2025 is the year to be transparent about AI’s disruptive workforce impact. The shift from vague promises about “productivity” to specific numbers—30-50% efficiency gains, thousands of FTE equivalents saved—marks a new phase in the AI transformation. The nuance in these statements is also telling: executives acknowledge AI will eliminate certain roles while creating others, but the math clearly favors net reduction. Goldman’s focus on “high-value people” and JPMorgan’s emphasis on doing “more with fewer people” reveals the emerging strategy: smaller, more elite workforces augmented by AI. This represents a fundamental renegotiation of the social contract in professional services, where career ladders and job security are being restructured around human-AI collaboration. The financial sector’s transparency may force other industries to confront similar realities sooner than anticipated.
Why This Matters
This coordinated messaging from Wall Street’s most powerful executives represents a watershed moment for the AI revolution’s impact on white-collar employment. The financial services industry employs millions globally and has historically been a bastion of high-paying professional jobs. When leaders of institutions managing trillions in assets simultaneously acknowledge AI will reduce head count, it signals a fundamental restructuring of knowledge work.
The implications extend far beyond banking. If AI can automate tasks performed by highly-educated professionals in coding, compliance, legal work, and client services, virtually no knowledge worker is immune. The 30-50% productivity gains cited by multiple CEOs suggest that even as business volumes grow, workforce needs will shrink dramatically.
Critically, these aren’t speculative predictions—banks are already implementing these changes, with measurable results like Bank of America’s 11,000 FTE savings and Citi’s 100,000 weekly hours of capacity creation. The candor from executives like Dimon and Scharf, who criticized others for not being honest about AI’s job impact, suggests the industry has moved past denial into active transformation. This will likely accelerate similar moves across professional services, consulting, law, and other knowledge-intensive industries, fundamentally reshaping the employment landscape for college-educated workers.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-citi-goldman-bofa-wells-how-ai-impact-headcounts-2026