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The Fed policymaker said prices rising too fast is the central bank's primary concern, while calling the labor market "stable, without being good"
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said inflation, not labor market weakness, is the central bank's most pressing concern, according to a video published by Wired on Tuesday.
"The biggest problem facing our economy right now is not the collapse of industry and the collapse of jobs; it's that the prices have been rising too fast. We got an inflation problem and people hate inflation," Goolsbee said in the video, which was recorded on June 22. He pointed to a trio of signals — the unemployment rate, the pace of hiring, and layoffs — to support his read that the labor market was "stable, without being good."
Goolsbee does not hold a vote on monetary policy this year and did not address in the video whether he supported the Fed's most recent rate decision. The Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-3 on July 29 to leave its benchmark rate unchanged in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, with three regional bank presidents — Beth Hammack of the Cleveland Fed, Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed, and Lorie Logan of the Dallas Fed — dissenting in favor of a quarter-point increase.
