SEATTLE -- JPMorgan Chase officials said Monday that the company will be cutting 3,400 jobs from Washington Mutual's headquarters in Seattle.

About 1,500 employees will be laid off in January, and another 1,900 will work as part of a transition team and may be employed through 2009.

Those 5,200 employees who stay on as transition workers will receive double their salary retroactive to Oct. 1 until their last day on the job, and be entitled to severance packages.

JPMorgan Chief Executive James L. "Jamie" Dimon met with about 200 WaMu branch operations employees Monday morning. Those employees are expected to keep their jobs, as JPMorgan has indicated that it will not be closing branches in Washington.

"Our branch staff is not changing at all," JPMorgan spokesman Thomas A. Kelly said. "We need all the branch personnel we have now."

"I was very impressed with him and very excited about moving forward with the future," said employee Barbara Galusha after the meeting.

Dimon also met with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and other senior elected leader behind closed doors.

"It's a shame to see the last Seattle-area bank go away," the mayor said. "I want him to remember they are now a Seattle company and they have roots here. And I hope JP Morgan takes time to get to know Seattle and become a part of this community."

Seattle-based WaMu ran into trouble giving loans to people with bad credit during the housing boom. As talk of the 119-year-old thrift's instability spread and its credit was downgraded, people began pulling billions of dollars out of the bank - leaving WaMu without enough cash to meet its obligations.

It was sold in September in a $1.9 billion fire sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co. and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Dick Conway of Dick Conway & Associates, an economist and regional economic forecaster, said the job losses underscored his prediction that the four-county region that includes Seattle will have fallen into recession by the end of the month.

King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties already have been hard hit by the construction and homebuilding industry collapse, making layoffs in other sectors especially painful, "but this one doesn't appreciably affect the (regional) forecast," Conway said.

Loss of the WaMu headquarters in the 55-story Washington Mutual Tower will likely boost the downtown Seattle office vacancy rate, especially as new buildings that were started before the economic tailspin are completed, he added.

The WaMu jobs being eliminated are almost entirely white-collar positions ranging from executives, managers and supervisors to less highly paid workers in areas where JPMorgan staff can assume the added load, Kelly said.

Washington Mutual had between 41,500 and 42,000 employees nationwide when JPMorgan took over the bank at the end of September.

JPMorgan said a total of 9,200 WaMu jobs would be eliminated nationwide. Outside of Seattle, the biggest number of job cuts is 1,600 at credit card call centers in San Francisco and Pleasanton, Calif., and layoffs are generally no more than a few hundred in other areas.

Those who are losing their jobs and are not part of the transition team will receive at least five weeks severance pay, with more for those who have been with the company for more than two years.