Wall Street’s Six Largest Banks Cut 15,000 Jobs and Posted $47 Billion in Profits
May 14, 2026 – 12:37 pm
TL;DR
The six largest US banks shed 15,000 jobs in Q1 2026 while posting $47 billion in collective profits, up 18% year on year. CEOs are no longer hedging about AI’s role in these reductions, explicitly crediting it for headcount cuts.
The Numbers:
- JPMorgan Chase: Spent $19.8 billion on technology in 2026, up $2 billion from the previous year. AI productivity gains of approximately 6%, with operations roles reduced by 4% and support functions by 2%. Client engagement and revenue generation positions rose 4%.
- Bank of America: AI assistant Erica saves the equivalent of 11,000 full-time positions. Nearly 90% of employees use Erica for Employees. AI removed 30% of labor from coding process, saving 2,000 engineering positions. Quarterly profit reached $8.6 billion, $1.6 billion ahead of the previous year.
- Citigroup: Planning to cut roughly 20,000 positions by end of 2026 (approximately 8% of global workforce) and reduce total headcount to around 180,000 after listing Banamex separately. CEO Jane Fraser stated AI and automation would allow running middle-office and operational functions with fewer people.
- Goldman Sachs: Launched OneGS 3.0 in late 2025, an AI-driven overhaul impacting 182,000 employees across 84 countries (adoption exceeding 70%).