Federal workers in Washington, DC, still have flexibility about where they work, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon isn’t impressed.
Speaking at The Atlantic Festival in the nation’s capital on Friday, Dimon discussed politics in the US and abroad in response to a question from Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic. Dimon spoke on a variety of topics related to how the government should be run and approach major problems. While he isn’t running for office, his name has reportedly come up in discussions as a potential Treasury Secretary for both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
In the middle of an answer, Dimon added: “By the way, I’d also make Washington, DC, go back to work. I can’t believe, when I come down here, the empty buildings. The people who work for you not going to the office.”
“That bothers me,” Dimon added. “I don’t allow that at JP,” he said, referring to JPMorgan.
He’s not the first CEO this week to comment on RTO. On Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that employees at his company would return to working in an office five days a week, effectively returning to its pre-pandemic norm.
JPMorgan’s own return-to-office policy requires managing directors to be in the office five days a week. The bank’s other employees must work in person at least three days a week.
Last year, the Biden Administration pushed for federal employees to return to in-person office work.
Many federal workers have indeed returned to the office for at least part of the week. The exact split varies by government agency, though.
Some Environmental Protection Agency workers, for instance, can spend as few as two days in the office per pay period or about four days a month, according to a list compiled by the Federal News Network and updated last month.
Other agencies, such as the Department of the Treasury and the Department of the Interior, require some employees to be in the office at least 50% of the time, according to the list.
Only about half of federal employees have the option to work remotely, according to a report to Congress from the Office of Management and Budget last month. The other half “work entirely in person already,” the report says.
The amount of empty office space in DC remains at a historic high. Office vacancy stood at about 22% during the second quarter of 2024, according to CBRE.
The federal government is one of the reasons. For example, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission decided to cut its office space in the capital in half during the quarter, CBRE said.
But DC’s downtown also includes many private-sector offices that attracted lawyers, consultants, and others during the workweek before the pandemic sent many people to work from home.
Dimon did acknowledge that some of his JPMorgan employees have a long commute and might prefer working from home. He also said, however, that employees who don’t like their RTO policy can find jobs elsewhere, according to The Economist.
