Fed’s Evans Says Labor Market Weakness Pervasive
Weak U.S. labor markets are likely to justify easy money policies for quite a while longer, a top Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday.
“Labor market issues … lead me to think this accommodation will likely be appropriate for some time,” Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said in remarks to the National Association for Business Economics.
Given a sluggish economic recovery, the Fed’s promise to hold rates exceptionally low for an extended period should be seen as a signal it will do so for “the next three or four meetings,” said Evans, who is not a voter on the U.S. central bank’s rate-setting panel this year.The Fed’s monetary policy-setting Open Market Committee meets approximately every six weeks.
“Beyond that … I think six months is a good time period to say I think we’ll have accommodative policy like we have today,” he said. If circumstances were to change, the Fed could change course sooner without surprising markets, he said.
Read More: – By Mark Felsenthal, Reuters
