Top Federal Reserve officials emphasized on Monday that the labor market is far from completely healed, underlining that the central bank will need to see considerably more progress before it will …
Top Federal Reserve officials emphasized on Monday that the labor market is far from completely healed, underlining that the central bank will need to see considerably more progress before it will feel ready to raise interest rates. “We still have a long way to go until we achieve the Federal Reserve’s maximum employment goal,” John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech Monday afternoon. Leading Fed officials — including Williams, Lael Brainard and Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair — have given similar assessments of the outlook in recent days and weeks. They have pointed out that the economy is swiftly healing, bringing back jobs and normal business activity, and that existing disruptions to supply chains and hiring issues will not last forever. But they say the recovery is incomplete and that it’s worth being modest about the path ahead, especially as the Delta variant demonstrates the coronavirus’s ability to disrupt progress. “Delta highlights the importance of being attentive to economic outcomes and not getting too attached to an outlook that may get buffeted by evolving virus conditions,” Brainard, a Fed governor, said in her prepared remarks on Monday.
