Neel Kashkari wants to make one thing very clear: the labor market isn’t the villain in America’s inflation story. Not right now, anyway.
The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank president told CNBC on May 28 that his attention is squarely on price stability, not employment. The labor market, in his view, is in “decent shape.” Inflation, on the other hand, is “simply much too high.”
The numbers tell the story
The US headline Consumer Price Index hit 3.8% in April 2026. Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.4% in the same month. That’s nearly double the Fed’s long-standing 2% target, a threshold that inflation has now exceeded for more than five years running.
Kashkari flagged the risk of inflation expectations becoming unanchored. He pointed to elevated energy and fertilizer prices as key culprits pushing costs higher across broader economic categories.
