Wells Fargo is cutting 86 jobs at its Jordan Creek campus in West Des Moines, with the layoffs taking effect Dec. 26. The reduction, announced on Iowa's WARN website on Tuesday, Aug. 18, marks the bank's largest single round of announced layoffs in the Des Moines metro in years.
According to the Des Moines Register, the cut is the largest in the state's publicly available WARN database dating back to Oct. 18, 2021, surpassing a previous high of 69 jobs cut in April 2023. A separate description of the same filing characterized it as the company's largest layoff since at least 2022, so the precise record length carries some uncertainty even as both accounts agree this is an unusually large single cut. WHO13 also reported that the Iowa WARN log shows the 86 Jordan Creek employees will lose their jobs on Dec. 26.
The latest cut brings Wells Fargo's 2026 layoff total in Iowa to 460 workers, the Register reports, after the bank laid off 501 metro employees in 2025. Those totals reflect a long run of workforce reductions in central Iowa: the same report notes the bank cut 1,975 jobs across 113 announced rounds of layoffs in the Des Moines metro since April 2022. Just two months earlier, an August report from the same outlet put the running tally at 1,619 jobs across 103 rounds since that same starting point, and noted a separate cut of 14 Jordan Creek employees that took effect Oct. 17.
Jordan Creek Became the Hub After Downtown Sale
Jordan Creek has been among the locations affected by Wells Fargo's staffing cuts in the metro.
A Wells Fargo spokesperson said the company regularly reviews and adjusts staffing levels to align with market conditions, and the same spokesperson said the bank strives to find opportunities for affected employees elsewhere in the company whenever possible. Per the Register's reporting, Wells Fargo also provides severance and career counseling to employees who cannot be placed in other roles within the company.
AI and a Shrinking Workforce
The West Des Moines cuts land against a backdrop of company-wide workforce contraction that Wells Fargo executives have tied directly to automation. Wells Fargo executives have said artificial intelligence will bring down the bank's headcount, and CEO Charles Scharf said on Oct. 13 that the company's workforce has declined every quarter for the past six years, down 30% from its second-quarter 2020 peak, according to the same Register report.
A separate report from the San Francisco Business Times found that the bank's chief financial officer expects more layoffs ahead as artificial intelligence continues to drive efficiency gains. Evident AI, a firm that tracks adoption across the banking industry, ranked Wells Fargo third among U.S. banks for AI adoption, behind JPMorgan Chase and Capital One, and fifth worldwide, the Register noted.
