SEATTLE - Thousands of Seattle Washington Mutual employees will lose their jobs.

WaMu spokeswoman Darcy Donahoe-Wilmott says JPMorgan Chase is laying off 3,400 WaMu employees in Seattle - more than 80 percent of the 4,300 people the company employs in the city.

Donahoe-Wilmott said the majority of these people worked in what were formerly WaMu headquarters or regional jobs.

Of those, 1,500 are "short-term" layoffs, who are receiving their 60-day "WARN" notices today and will be gone by the end of January. Another 1,900 will work in "transitional" roles, meaning they will stay on for longer than 60 days, but not beyond the end of 2009.

JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, met with 200 WaMu employees in Seattle on Monday morning. Donahoe-Wilmot, said the mood was upbeat. She said those meeting with Dimon were from retail branch operations and most are expected to keep their jobs.

It’s headquarters employees whose jobs are unnecessary because they're duplicated by JPMorgan Chase employees in New York.

Today the 60-day formal notices go out.

Patrick Abbott works in WaMu Global Investments and says the upside has been JPMorgan Chase’s handling of communication.

“I haven’t been through this before but I know other people that have and this has been, by far, very well actually,” he said.

“There's other financial institutions that have also been absorbed, but this is certainly one of the biggest by far and one of the most daunting tasks I'm sure that JPMorgan has ever taken on,” said Seattle economic analyst Scott Smallman.

Workers enter one of the worst job markets in American history. Smallman says Seattle will struggle to absorb the pool of talent.

“You hate to be that dire about it, but it's not a great time,” he said.

From IT to human resources and lenders, the workers JPMorgan needs to cut are being offered severance packages, relocation options for some. Despite Seattle's unemployment rate being better than other cities, it's still tough.

“Historically, if we were in a stronger economy, we could handle it and take it pretty much in stride in the economy we're in now, we're every job's important, it's going to be much more difficult,” said Smallman.

JPMorgan acquired Washington Mutual's banking operation after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized the thrift in September.