Megabank JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) announced Tuesday morning that beginning next February the bank will begin to raise wages for about 18,000 hourly full- and part-time employees. Depending on the cost of living at various locations, minimum hourly pay will rise in a range of $12.00 to $16.50. The increases will be phased in over three years in more than 75 cities.

According to the announcement, about 90% of employees who will benefit from this change live and work in locations where pay raises will increase to between $13.50 and $16.50 an hour. Most of the affected employees work as bank branch tellers and customer service representatives in JPMorgan’s consumer and community banking business.

Employees in San Francisco and New York metro areas will see minimum pay increase to $16.50 an hour in 2019, and base pay for workers in Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., will rise to $15 an hour in the same period.

CEO Jamie Dimon wrote Tuesday morning in an op-ed in The New York Times:

A pay increase is the right thing to do. Wages for many Americans have gone nowhere for too long. Many employees who will receive this increase work as bank tellers and customer service representatives. Above all, it enables more people to begin to share in the rewards of economic growth.

The bank trimmed its headcount by nearly 8% between 2012 and 2015 as it worked to cut costs in the face of increases in regulatory expenses and lower trading revenues.

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