Under pressure from the Trump administration, JPMorgan is continuing to rework and reword its commitment to the controversial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion system of hiring and promotion, including possibly an overhaul of its flashy displays of DEI commitments featured on the company’s website, the Post has learned.
But my guess — and the guess of people in Washington and on Wall Street following this issue — is that it won’t be enough to satisfy the courts, the public’s demands for a color-blind meritocracy and the Trump administration’s desires to roll back one of the most divisive political, cultural and business issues of our time.
In many ways the nation’s largest lender is an outlier in continuing to support DEI, or the use of racial and “intersectional” (gender and genderidentity) preferences in hiring.
Companies are dropping the practice because of its dubious legality following the 2023 SCOTUS ruling outlawing affirmative action in college admissions.
President Trump has signed executive orders ending DEI in federal contracting, and is calling on major companies to do the same.
And many are.
Just this past Friday, BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager and once a major DEI adherent, said that while it loves diversity, it is “not requiring managers to interview a diverse slate of candidates for open positions.”
Others have gone so far as to drop the word “equity” or guaranteed outcomes from their hiring metrics.
Yet it’s unclear where exactly JPMorgan, led by mega-banker Jamie Dimon, stands on the issue.
Dimon has a long history supporting DEI, and became obsessed with it in 2020 during the social-justice George Floyd riots.
But a lot has changed since our “summer of love,” as the left termed those turbulent times, and Dimon has spent most of the past month of Donald Trump’s presidency attempting to spin his way out of a possible confrontation with the anti-DEI president.
Changing public filings
JPM has begun altering public filings as they relate to so-called intersectional hiring preferences at the bank.
Some people at the bank tell me there will be at least a semantic weakening of the bank’s DEI commitment.
On deck, my sources there say, is a revamping of the DEI section of its website, which features maybe the most florid examples of DEI worship in the business community.
As it stands now, the website boasts that “58% of new US hires are racially or ethnically diverse,” and 49% of all global new hires are women.
The company has had a 35% increase in “self-identifying” LBGTQ+ employees in the last year it posted data, following a 50% increase.
There are “500+” LBGTQ+ managing directors and executive directors at the bank, it adds.
People at JPM say look for possible new language that softens such DEI humblebrags.
It may even remove “equity” from its diversity hiring metrics, like many others already have.
Yet, these semantic changes won’t satisfy the Trump White House, and the president himself, my reporting suggests.
White House advisers tell me language tweaks often obscure the backdoor use of illegal hiring preferences.
The president, they tell me, wants a color-blind country, and he wants corporate America’s buy-in. Too much is at stake to downgrade skill when we are in a global war for economic supremacyand freedom with China.
No confusion from Don
For proof, they say, look no further than Trump’s Truth Social feed where he recently singled out Apple for JPM-like DEI worship.
As Trump wrote in all caps so there was no confusion about where he stood: “APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM,” adding that “DEI WAS A HOAX THAT HAS BEEN VERY BAD FOR OUR COUNTRY. DEI IS GONE!!!”
On Monday, Dimon attempted more damage control, this time with the people over at CNBC. When asked about his DEI commitment, Dimon said: “I don’t like wasted money on bureaucracy . . . obviously you have to modify your plans, but we look at our policies all the time… But if we did something wrong with DEI, we’re going to fix it.
I never had a problem admitting that we did too much and we need to change something.”
What that gibberish means in reality is difficult to say. A JPM spokesman later told me the bank is “still committed” to DEI.
“Changing something doesn’t mean weakening” it, the flack insisted.
The spokesman also said all hiring is merit-based, which again seems like a contradiction if you’re committed to DEI.
Dimon’s handlers have argued in the past that JPM is a highly profitable enterprise while employing DEI, so it must account for something.
True, JPM is profitable, but DEI is hardly the reason any big bank makes money.
Dimon is a very good banker, but for all his skills as a manager, he runs a business protected by the federal government since the 2008 financial crisis, aka it’s Too Big To Fail.
That designation allows it to borrow cheaply and lend more expensively.
It almost seems like it’s able to print money even when the economy sputters.
Sorry, the real reason Dimon can’t pull himself away from DEI is because he’s a progressive, and always has been. He’s slated to retire in the next few years, and might run for office as a Democrat or take a job in academia.
Both are places that remain committed to racialized employment policies, which explains a lot.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
