The Federal Reserve’s district banks will cut 1,740 check-processing jobs over four years across the U.S. as consumers write fewer checks.
The largest single reduction among 14 offices will be in Minneapolis, where 210 posts will be cut, said David Fettig, a spokesman at the Minneapolis Fed, which is leading the effort to consolidate the Fed’s check processing.
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Other sites with at least 100 job cuts include Cincinnati; Charlotte, N.C.; Baltimore; Chicago; Los Angeles; Utica, New York; and Windsor Locks, Conn.
The 12 district banks are consolidating processing into four existing regional sites: Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Dallas. Since 2003, the banks have reduced the locations where they process checks to 22 from 45, with one other site, Nashville, scheduled to shut in the next few months.
Americans wrote about 37 billion checks in 2003, down from 42 billion in 2001 and as many as 50 billion in 1995, according to the Fed’s most recent study.
The reductions amount to about 8 percent of the central bank’s jobs, according to calculations by Bloomberg News. The Federal Reserve system employs 21,000, including 3,300 in check processing.
Some jobs will be cut through retirement and normal turnover, though the exact number is impossible to estimate, Fettig said.
Other sites that will lose jobs include Memphis, Tenn.; Seattle; Denver; Jacksonville, Fla.; Des Moines, Iowa; and St. Louis.
The district banks, formed in 1913, aid in supervising commercial banks and processing checks as reporting on regional business conditions.
