Jerome Powell
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We here at the Fed are rationally exuberant to celebrate your 100th birthday with you.
The unemployment rate was 4.4% in December and has changed little in recent months.
Job gains have remained low.
Total non-farm payrolls declined at an average pace of 22,000 per month over the last three months, excluding government employment.
While job gains have remained low, the unemployment rate has shown some signs of stabilization, and inflation remains somewhat elevated.
In support of our goals, today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave our policy rate unchanged.
You're confident it can maintain that independence at this point?
The best thing we can do for people who are feeling that squeeze is to keep inflation under control.
We do hear a lot about affordability, and we take that very seriously, and we take it to heart.
The best thing we can do for people who are feeling that squeeze is to keep inflation under control and, you know, frankly, to finish the job of getting inflation back down to 2%.
Every advanced economy democracy in the world has come around to this common practice, and that is to not have direct elected official control over the setting of monetary policy.
While job gains have remained low, the unemployment rate has shown some signs of stabilization, and inflation remains somewhat elevated.
In support of our goals, today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave our policy rate unchanged.
At today's meeting, the committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.5% to 3.75%.
Monetary policy is not on a preset course and we will make our decisions on a meeting by meeting basis.
The economy is growing at a solid pace.
The unemployment rate has been broadly stable and inflation remains somewhat elevated.
So we'll be looking to our goal variables and letting the data light the way for us.
This normalization of our policy stance should help stabilize the labor market while allowing inflation to resume its downward trend toward 2%.
A good part of the slowing in the pace of job growth over the past year reflects a decline in the growth of the labor force due to lower immigration and labor force participation, though labor demand has clearly softened as well.