In what could be Jerome Powell’s final meeting as Federal Reserve chair, he is expected to lead his fellow policymakers toward another cautious pause, with stubborn inflation and a resilient labor market leaving little room yet for interest rate cuts.
The decision Wednesday will come against a backdrop of elevated energy prices and a central bank that has been above its 2% inflation target for five years at the same time that the labor market has been weak but not in distress. That’s not a recipe for easing, at least not yet.
“On the dual mandate, they’d say we’re roughly at a stable labor market,” Roger Ferguson, an economist and former vice chair at the Fed, told CNBC. “On the inflation side of the mandate, [there’s] a lot more work to be done with a sticky 3% [inflation rate], and I hope they argue, ‘we’re going to sit tight for a little while to see how this all plays out.’”
Similarly, Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle expects the post-meeting statement “is likely to acknowledge the better labor market news and higher inflation numbers but to leave the standing policy guidance unchanged. We expect a strong consensus to stay on hold for now, with only one dissent, as in March.”
