Fed’s Goolsbee: don’t want to ‘blow through’ full employment
3:19 pm Friday, August 02nd, 2024
(Reuters) – Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee said on Friday the U.S. central bank should move in a “steady” way, a mild pushback against the rush of market bets that the Fed will react to a report of weak July jobs data with a bigger-than-usual half-point rate cut in September.
“We never want to overreact to any one month’s numbers,” Goolsbee said in a Bloomberg TV interview. Even so, he said, “Our absolute goal now is we want to settle at something like full employment, not blow through normal and deteriorate.”
The U.S. Labor Department reported earlier on Friday that employers slowed hiring sharply in July, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%. That’s above the 4.1% rate that Fed policymakers’ estimate is consistent with full employment, Goolsbee said.
Fed policy is restrictive and tight, he said, and he noted that inflation has come down and the labor market has cooled in the year that the Fed has kept its policy rate steady, suggesting that he remains supportive of easing policy.
He declined to say when or by how much the Fed should cut rates, repeating his view that he does not want to tie his hands on policy ahead of any given Fed meeting.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Mark Porter and Andrea Ricci)
