Jamie Dimon Calls JPMorgan a Black Diversity Leader. That’s Not What the Numbers Show

Jamie Dimon said Tuesday on CNBC that JPMorgan Chase & Co. has “done as well as almost any corporation out there” when it comes to black diversity. That’s not what the firm’s own numbers show.

The percentages of black employees and executives in the U.S. fell over the past five years at JPMorgan, Bloomberg News reported last month. Black diversity is going backward at several of the biggest U.S. banks, even as it’s grown across corporate America. Inside Dimon’s firm, black employees dropped last year to 13.7 percent of the U.S. workforce, the lowest at the bank in at least a decade and below the 2015 national figure.

“We’re making a special effort because we acknowledge that while we’ve done as well as almost any corporation out there, we haven’t done JPMorgan well,” Dimon said in the interview, citing boosted recruitment and retention efforts.

Dimon said his firm still has work to do. “The reason it’s different is because it’s a different history, a different background. A lot of African Americans didn’t grow up in the same neighborhoods as white people,” he said. “Whites are maybe less comfortable with them.”