JPMorgan Chase swings the ax at 19,000 jobs

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) expects to slash 19,000 jobs in its mortgage and community banking businesses. That makes Chief Executive Jamie Dimon the latest Wall Street honcho to announce cost-cutting measures as the economy continues its slow crawl out of the worst hole since the Great Depression.

As Bloomberg News and others have noted, Dimon said during the company's Investor Day on Tuesday that about 4,000 of these cuts will come this year. Overall, the layoffs would equal more than 7% of its staff of 295,000. According to Bloomberg, the banking giant will slash 13,000 to 15,000 mortgage jobs through 2014, and 3,000 to 4,000 jobs in community banking. Most will be eliminated through attrition. Ongoing hiring will offset the total over that time, with the net being around 4,000 fewer positions, according to a JPMorgan spokesperson.

Dimon is known to be maniacal about reducing costs, and it's easy to understand why he would target those businesses.

Earlier this year, the New York-based bank agreed to pay $753 million to a set up a fund to assist borrowers whose homes were wrongly foreclosed. The company also agreed to spend $1.2 billion on foreclosure prevention. Meanwhile, competition in mortgage businesses is intensifying as historically low interest rates are spurring a housing market rebound. JPMorgan also recently revamped the management of its consumer and community banking business as part of a wider corporate overhaul.

The bank's board slashed Dimon's 2012 pay by 50% in the wake of the London Whale trading scandal that cost $4 billion. However, he still earned a $10 million bonus, which probably took the sting out of getting his wrists slapped.

Shares of JPMorgan slid lower in early Tuesday trading by around 1%. The shares have surged almost 29% over the past year.

Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup (C) have also recently announced job cuts.

--Jonathan Berr doesn't own shares of the listed stocks. Follow him on Twitter @jdberr.