Amazon’s change of mind about locating in the New York City area resulted in a loss of about 100,000 jobs, far beyond the 25,000 people who would have worked directly for the company, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
“It wasn’t just the 25,000 jobs that Amazon was going to do. It was probably going to be about 100,000 jobs supporting it,” Dimon said at the National Governors Association Winter Meeting over the weekend. “And they would have gone from low skill to high skilled to consultants to lawyers to restaurants to barbers and construction workers,” said Dimon, who donates to both parties. “That’s the shame, that’s what they lost, the whole ecosystem that creates jobs and furthers interest and cities and states acts that act that way, they will be long-term losers.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., helped lead opposition to Amazon’s move to Long Island City near Queens.
Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said the Democratic politicians who criticized Amazon’s move to New York City were wrong.
“From a selfish standpoint, because I’m hoping to attract them to Maryland, I was pleased with it, but if I were somebody in New York I would be really concerned about those politicians,” said Hogan, who put the estimate at total jobs lost closer to 50,000. “It’s a big mistake,” he said.
Hogan revealed that the state of Maryland plans to make another pitch for Amazon to come to Maryland.
Watch Dimon’s comments:
“We were on the short list, very close when they made the decision to go to New York. We were right up there after hundreds of people across the country, we got down to the final cut and they made the decision to put half of it in Virginia and half of it in New York and we’re going to make the argument that they should come back and take another look. We had the most aggressive proposal in the country and we came very close,” Hogan said.
[Related: Why Virginia isn’t exploiting New York City’s Amazon fiasco]
During the governors meeting, Dimon slammed both parties.
“The Left side denigrates certain jobs. They denigrate the burger flipper job. They denigrate the starting job,” he said, adding that most of the people that run restaurants started by working in starter jobs in the industry. “We’ve got to get dignity back to work.”
Dimon said that Democrats should acknowledge that the government has “failed” in certain areas.
“I think the issue is getting growth and sharing the wealth of it better. I think the rich have made a lot of money, so if I was a Democrat, I think the Democrats should acknowledge a lot of things that government did, did not work, okay? They have failed and we spent trillions of dollars on it,” Dimon said. “If you take more money at the state level or the federal level, what are you going to do with it?”
Republicans should “acknowledge we need proper safety nets for the poor, the sick, the old,” he said.
[Also read: Bill de Blasio calls Amazon’s New York pullout ‘an abuse of corporate power’]
