Economics
Powell May Soon Have to Detail Fed Vision of ‘Inclusive’ Economy
- Forecasters expect rate hike when Black unemployment hits 6.1%
- Fed chief will get chance to shape expectations on Wednesday
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Federal Reserve officials say they want to use monetary policy to promote an inclusive economy, but so far they’ve shied away from describing what such an economy might look like.
For now, forecasters say they expect the U.S. central bank won’t begin raising interest rates until 2023, when national unemployment will have sunk to 3.6% and Black unemployment to 6.1% -- roughly where those numbers were in early 2020, right before the pandemic struck. That’s according to the median estimates of the 16 economists who made predictions for both metrics in a recent Bloomberg survey.