The JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, speaking Friday on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria, used the season’s graduation backdrop to offer one of his most direct career pep talks yet — even as he simultaneously delivered a more sobering set of remarks to New York City’s new progressive mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

“Learn how to think, learn how to earn respect, have E.Q., learn how to communicate, learn to have a heart, have empathy, all that,” Dimon said when asked what advice he’d give to graduates anxious about entering a workforce being rapidly reshaped by artificial intelligence. “You’ll have a great life.”

Dimon, whose grandparents immigrated from Greece and Italy and never finished high school, framed the moment in explicitly American terms. “The notion that we don’t have this unbelievable country — our system morphs. It will create jobs,” he said.

The remarks came amid Dimon’s broader, and considerably more cautious, read on the economy. He described the outlook as “pretty good” but flagged rising inflation as the clearest near-term risk, warning that his probabilities of a worse outcome are higher than others’.

Asked about the Nasdaq’s 28% surge since late March, Dimon said he wasn’t surprised but stopped well short of enthusiasm: “I actually think it’s a huge intellectual error to say, here’s my base case.”

As anxiety has mounted about depressed entry-level hiring, with Gen Z crowds even booing luminaries such as Eric Schmidt amid commencement speeches touting AI, Dimon has given warm but blunt advice to ambitious young workers. Developing an emotional quotient, communicating succinctly, and staying in the office have all been themes of Dimon’s prescription for future career success. “There’s going to be a grunt part to every part of a job,” he said in April. “Get over it.”

To Dimon’s point, academics are started to debate whether remote work has been a bigger drag on entry-level hiring than AI, and Apollo Global Management’s Torsten Slok asserted on Friday that he sees “zero evidence” of job loss related specifically to AI. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite.

A ‘great’ but frank meeting with Mamdani

When Mamdani was still a mayoral candidate last October, Dimon made a pledge at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Summit that drew considerable attention. Asked by Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell what he would do if the 34-year-old Democratic socialist won, Dimon was direct: “If he becomes mayor, I will call him and offer my help.”

He followed through. Earlier this month, the two sat down at JPMorgan’s gleaming new 270 Park Avenue headquarters — part of a broader Wall Street outreach tour Mamdani undertook after facing criticism over his tax proposals, which also included meetings with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray. The criticism grew heated following Mamdani’s viral video outside hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthouse, with Griffin himself arguing that it was out of bounds.

A JPMorgan spokesperson described Mamdani’s first face-to-face with Dimon as “constructive” and Dimon told Bartiromo that was true. “I had a great meeting with Mamdani,” he said, “meaning it’s pleasant, but I said everything I want to say.” Dimon explained that he walked the mayor through his view of how cities compete: on taxes, on crime, on sanitation, on schools. “Quality of life has nothing to do with ideology,” Dimon said, stressing both that “I want him to succeed” and “my opinion was made.”

“I’ve seen mayors grow into the job,” Dimon said, while noting that Mamdani “has never had a job like that.” State records show the city employed roughly 300,000 people as of the end of 2024.

He said that Mamdani was “very polite” and “very earnest,” and they discussed affordable housing and childcare, both in terms of what people want and how easy it is to accomplish. “Most people want it. If you do it badly, it will be a disaster. The thing is, do it right.”

When Bartiromo raised Mamdani’s widely criticized video outside Griffin’s home, Dimon agreed it was a security concern. “My guess is he probably regrets that,” he said, “but you’ve got to ask him that.”

Affordable housing as common ground

One area where Dimon and Mamdani may find at least partial overlap: housing. Dimon used Friday’s interview to again call for sweeping regulatory reform, arguing that the housing shortage is almost entirely a policy failure: zoning restrictions, redundant building codes, permitting delays. He argued those changes alone could reduce mortgage costs by 50 basis points.

“The law that holds back housing is policy,” he said. “It’s bad local policy or state policy or sometimes federal policy that needs to be changed.” JPMorgan, he said, plans to double its affordable housing footprint within five years and expand small business financing from 7 million to 10 million customers as part of its broader American Dream Initiative, launched in March.

For graduates entering that environment — with stretched housing costs, a jobs market in flux, and AI reshaping entire industries — Dimon’s counsel was simple and almost old-fashioned: work hard, read daily, find your purpose.

“I tell people,” he said, “the notion that somehow I go and I can coast — I can’t.”

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.