Fed’s Mester Says Jobs Report ‘Great’ But Fed Will Be Patient

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said the better-than-expected March payroll report was “great” but that a lot more progress is needed to get the economy to where it was before the pandemic.

“It was a great report, it’s nice to see those numbers. We’re still almost 8.5 million jobs below where we were before the pandemic so we need more of those kinds of jobs reports coming out,” she said Monday in an interview on CNBC. It was the first public reaction from a Fed official to the jobs data, which was released on Friday.