The CEOs of banks, tech companies and consulting firms are forming a group to boost hiring from underrepresented groups in New York.
Leaders from 27 firms that represent many of New York’s dominant industries banded together to create the New York Jobs CEO Council, which aims to hire 100,000 people from low-income Black, Latino and Asian communities by 2030, according to a release.
The co-chairs of the new organization include Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM); Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM (NYSE:IBM), and Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture. Other initial members of the CEO group include Jeff Bezos of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Satya Nadella of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Sundar Pichai of Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS).
The CEOs are "coming together to try to tackle one of society’s big problems, which is getting inner city school [children], largely minority, getting these kids through school and with a high-paying job," Dimon said Tuesday in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle on the Today Show.
The coronavirus pandemic has helped exacerbate inequality in U.S. cities, resulting in more job losses and worse health outcomes for people in low-income neighborhoods. Nearly 40% of lower-income Americans lost work as the virus began its assault on the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve said in May.
The group will be led by Dr. Gail Mellow, former LaGuardia Community College president, and plans to help companies hire people for entry-level jobs that put them on a career path. The 100,000 figure includes 25,000 jobs and apprenticeships for students from the City University of New York.
JPM shares, for their part, jumped $4.24, or 4.2%, to begin Tuesday at $104.88.
