The leader of America’s biggest bank wants to see schools doing more to bring students up to pace with the working world, instead of leaving it to businesses to bridge the gap.
Jamie Dimon has long been an advocate of getting younger people into well-paid positions, and believes schools should be monitored on whether their students launch careers after they graduate as opposed to whether they go to college.
This week Dimon—who oversees more than 240,000 employees worldwide—doubled down on that stance.
“Businesses have to hire a lot of people and they have to train them, so when the school system doesn’t do it, it makes this harder for companies,” he told Axios in an interview released Thursday.
“What you need in a lot of these things is, certificates and training that get them the good job.”
Dimon—who was paid a record $36 million for his work in 2023—also pushed back on the notion that his work to get younger people and underrepresented communities into the workplace is a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) exercise.
The Harvard Business School graduate was speaking in relation to his position as the executive chairman of the New York Jobs CEO Council—a coalition of some of the largest employers in the Big Apple.
Also on the board are Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
A father of three, Dimon rejected the implication that his work on the council was linked to DEI—a topic that has split opinion among the nation’s top CEOs.
The JPMorgan Chase chairman said he was “not interested in labels” and added that the jobs council had “nothing to do with DEI.”
“This has to do with the system isn’t working and needs to be fixed,” he said. “It is part of our job [as CEOs and companies] to lift up society. You call that whatever you want… If we leave behind whole parts of society, we’re making a huge mistake for our country.”
Judging school quality
Dimon’s sentiments echo thoughts he shared earlier this year about what factors should be considered when establishing whether a school is of good quality.
He told Indianapolis-based WISH-TV in March: “If you look at kids they gotta be educated to get jobs. Too much focus in education has been on graduating college… It should be on jobs. I think the schools should be measured on, did the kids get out and get a good job?”
Dimon pointed out that a 17-year-old bank teller could make $40,000 a year, adding: “And if you happen to have a family at 18 or whatever, you get $20,000 in medical benefit for your family. You can be a welder, you can be a coder, you could be cyber, you could be automotive—all of those jobs are $40,000 to $60,000, $70,000 a year.”
“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” Dimon repeated. “There are a lot of efforts taking place around the country but I think we’ve fallen behind as a nation.”
Changing attitudes
It seems students themselves are also thinking differently about what they want to get out of their education.
Education data specialists National Clearing House reported in January that undergraduate enrollment grew 1.2% in the fall of 2023—the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
But within that picture is significant growth in vocational subjects—courses designed to help students learn in a practical way to prepare them for a skills-based role.
The database reported that at community colleges with a high vocational program focus, enrollment grew 16% in the same period, bringing them above fall 2019 levels.
As Sam Pillar, cofounder and CEO at Jobber, wrote for Fortune earlier this month: “Homes and other infrastructure are getting older. Today, the median owner-occupied home in the U.S. is 40 years old, which means there’s a growing need for repairs, maintenance, and remodeling of the aging housing stock.
“At the same time, skilled workers are retiring, and there aren’t enough young people coming into the trades to take their place… This leads to delays in service and drives up the cost for consumers. The labor shortage is a major problem but also a massive opportunity for ambitious young people to come in and fill the gap. Thankfully, we’re seeing Gen Z show an interest in seizing this opportunity.”
