Fed’s Williams: ‘soft landing’ would still see unemployment rate rise
8:55 am Tuesday, May 10th, 2022
ELTVILLE AM RHEIN, Germany (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s efforts to tame inflation will at best still see declining economic growth and a small rise in the unemployment rate for a period, New York Fed President John Williams said on Tuesday.
“When I think of a soft landing, it’s really a matter of, yes we could see growth below trend for a while and we definitely could see unemployment moving up somewhat but not in a huge way…I think that’s the challenge,” Williams said during a question and answer session following a speech to an economics conference organized by Germany’s central bank in Eltville am Rhein, Germany.
Williams added that he would not define a soft landing as an economy in which the unemployment rate stayed at its current level of 3.6%, but one in which the labor market stayed broadly strong and healthy as inflation came down toward the central bank’s goal.
(Reporting by Francesco Canepa; writing by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
