Fifth Third to cut back workforce

Bank officials didn’t say Friday how many positions could be lost.

Fifth Third Bancorp is cutting jobs in the region, bank officials said Friday.

However, the company is not discussing the number of employee layoffs or how many are happening in the Dayton area.

No notice of layoffs appeared on the state’s “WARN” (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice Act) notice board as of midday Friday.

Typically, larger companies that lay off 50 or more employees within 30 days are required by law to file a WARN notice with the state’s Department of Job and Family Services.

A Fifth Third spokesman said the bank needs to make “adjustments when there is not a good match-up between staffing, market demand and the operating environment.”

“Fifth Third has long had an approach of managing staff carefully and making ongoing adjustments,” Fifth Third spokesman Larry Magnesen said in an email. “That has helped avoid large, broad-based reductions.”

The Cincinnati-based company is still hiring for certain critical skills and has about 1,122 open positions.

More than 500 of those openings are posted on the Fifth Third recruiting website.

“It’s worth noting that the bank’s total employment in greater Cincinnati of about 7,500 employees is up by 800 over the last five years or so (since yearend 2013),” Magnesen said.

He added: “Clearly, staffing adjustments increase efficiency. That is a priority of the bank in order to invest in the capabilities in terms of expertise and technology to address our customers’ evolving needs.”

Fifth Third met its goal of closing some 105 area branches by June 2016, Greg Carmichael, the bank’s president and chief executive, told this news outlet in August 2016.

At the time, the bank had 47 branches and about 700 employees in the Dayton market.

Fifth Third’s board elected Carmichael, a University of Dayton graduate, the company’s chairman early in 2018.

The company is still hiring for certain critical skills and has about 1,122 open positions.