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    The Fed’s Favorite Price Index Rose 4 Percent. What Comes Next?

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    The Federal Reserve’s inflation gauge popped in June from a year earlier. Economists think it will begin to moderate.The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation climbed by 4 percent in June compared with a year earlier, as a rebounding economy and strong demand for goods and services helped to push prices higher.The gains in the Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation index were the fastest since 2008, but in line with economists’ expectations. That rapid pace is not expected to last — and how much and how quickly it will fade is the economic question of the moment.Inflation has been surprisingly quick this year. Economists knew prices would post strong increases as they were measured against weak figures from 2020, when costs for many common purchases slumped. But the jump in recent months has been more intense than most were expecting.Prices for goods and services risePercent change in personal consumption expenditures index from prior year

    Source: Bureau of Economic AnalysisBy The New York TimesThat’s partly because supply bottlenecks have emerged across America’s reopening economy. Computer chip shortages pushed up the prices of electronics and delayed automobile production, causing used car prices to surge as people scrambled to find vehicles. Employers are struggling to hire back workers fast enough to meet returning demand, and wages and prices at restaurants and some other service providers have begun to move higher.Spending remains strong, Friday’s release also showed, climbing 1 percent in June compared with May. That was more than the 0.7 percent pop that economists in a Bloomberg survey had anticipated, and adjusted for inflation, it was still up 0.5 percent.Even as consumer demand holds up, June’s inflation data may be a high point in the price pressure saga. Last year’s low figures are becoming a less important factor, and many economists expect the rapid pace of price gains to begin to moderate in the coming months. A breakneck increase in used vehicle prices, which has been large enough to push overall prices higher, showed signs of moderating in July.Yet how quickly inflation will fall back to the Fed’s 2 percent target, which it tries to hit on average over time, is increasingly uncertain. It is hard to know how quickly the supply chain snarls that have complicated the price picture so far this year will clear up, or whether new ones will emerge. Climbing coronavirus cases around the world and the emergence of new variants, like Delta, could make for continued disturbances in global production and shipping routes, ones that will hit just in time for the back-to-school and the holiday shopping seasons.“The problem with the Delta variant is that the factors that are reducing the supply of goods and labor are elongated and continue,” said Constance L. Hunter, chief economist for the accounting firm KPMG. “This prolongs many of the components of the pandemic that were causing inflation.”Michael Patrick, a chef and restaurateur in Memphis, has had to raise pay for cooks and dishwashers to entice them to return to his upscale Southern food restaurant, Rizzo’s by Michael Patrick. His food costs have risen, too, because supply-chain issues have made it hard to get chicken and other key ingredients. So he has responded by raising menu prices twice in recent months. So far, his customers aren’t complaining.“People aren’t even blinking,” he said. “Not one person has said to me, ‘I can’t believe you raised your price on meatloaf two dollars.’”But Mr. Patrick is concerned about the effects of the Delta variant. Both he and his customers have learned to navigate pandemic life, he said, so he is confident he will be able to maintain sales. But if the resurgence of the virus leads to more shutdowns at meat-processing plants and other food producers, that could pose a bigger challenge.“Canola oil, beef, chicken — it’s all going up because the supplies just weren’t there,” he said. “Hopefully, at the end of the day, these variants don’t cause a lot of these companies to close their doors again.”It will matter for workers how quickly today’s robust price gains fade. Higher prices are taking a bite out of workers’ paychecks. Income after taxes fell 0.5 percent June, accounting for the impact of inflation. Over the past year, inflation has more than offset a modest rise in after-tax income.The data released Friday showed that core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel prices and can give a cleaner reading on price trends, picked up by 3.5 percent in June from a year earlier, for the highest annual reading in 30 years.The headline index climbed 0.5 percent from May to June, slightly less than the 0.6 percent that economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected.The fresh inflation data, released by the Commerce Department, came out later than a separate Labor Department inflation report. But they are closely watched because the Fed uses the Personal Consumption Expenditure index — which tracks things people consume but do not directly pay for, like medical care — to judge progress toward its inflation target.“The U.S. economy surprised us all,” James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said during a speech on Friday. “Quite a bit of inflation, much more than we have experienced historically. Of course, we do expect that to moderate, but I don’t think it’s going to moderate completely in 2022.”The Fed is willing to look through inflation it expects to be temporary, but it would be concerned if it saw rapid price gains turning into a stickier situation. Officials are especially watching trends like rising wages for a sense of whether price gains will last.Wages and salaries rose 0.9 percent in the second quarter, slightly slower than in the first three months of the year, according to separate data released Friday by the Labor Department. But pay is rising rapidly in some industries that are reopening as the pandemic ebbs: Wages in the leisure and hospitality sector rose 2.8 percent in the second quarter, and are up 6.1 percent over the past year.Service workers are getting raisesPercent change from prior quarter in private-sector wages and salaries

    Note: Data is seasonally adjustedSource: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesShould pay increases turn into a cycle — one in which workers regularly ask for more money to cover rising costs, and employers give raises but pass the expense on — it could make for persistent inflation down the road. Fed officials generally do not think that is happening right now.“There is a form of wage inflation that can lead to price inflation, and we’re not seeing that right now,” Jerome H. Powell, the central bank’s chair, said at a news conference on Wednesday.Mr. Powell and many of his colleagues have maintained that price pressures should fade as the economy gets back to normal — Mr. Bullard is among the more concerned Fed officials when it comes to inflation. Many central bankers point out that even though inflation has come in hot in recent months, consumer expectations for future inflation remain at historically normal levels.White House economic officials have been stressing similar points, and arguing that high inflation is no reason to dial back their policy ambitions, which they say would not add to price pressures. The Biden administration is trying to shepherd a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill through Congress, one that includes $550 billion in new spending to make far-reaching investments in the nation’s transit and public works.But Republicans have seen rising inflation as a poignant way to criticize the Biden administration, which they say is mismanaging the economic reopening and allowing prices to gallop out of control.“There’s no question we have serious inflation right now,” Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said in a CNN interview last week. “There is a question about how long it lasts. And I’m just worried that the risk is high that this is going to be with us for a while.”Even some central bankers are becoming wary as inflation rises.“The risk on inflation is that it does not fall back as rapidly as we had hoped, or that we get some other kind of shock that sends inflation even higher in 2022,” Mr. Bullard said on Friday. He argued that the central bank ought to start slowing down its big bond-buying campaign, so that it can finish that “taper” early next year and be prepared to lift interest rates as necessary.“It’s not that we’d have to lift off sooner,” he said. “But we’d want to have the option.” More

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    The Fed’s favorite price index rose 4 percent.

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    The Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation index climbed by 4 percent in June compared with a year earlier, as a rebounding economy and soaring demand for goods helped to push prices higher.The gains in the Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation index were the fastest since 2008, but in line with economists expectations. That rapid pace is not expected to last, but how much and how quickly it will fade is the economic question of the moment.Inflation has been surprisingly rapid this year. Economists knew prices would post strong increases as they were measured against weak figures from 2020, when costs for many common purchases slumped. But the jump has been more intense than most were expecting.That’s partly because supply bottlenecks have emerged across America’s reopening economy. Computer ship shortages pushed up the prices of electronics and delayed automobile production, causing used car prices to surge. Employers are struggling to hire back workers fast enough to meet returning demand, and prices for restaurant meals and some other services have begun to move higher.June’s personal consumption expenditure price data may be a high point in the inflationary saga. Last year’s low figures are fading from the data, and many economists expect the rapid pace of price gains to begin to moderate in the coming months.On a monthly basis, inflation climbed 0.5 percent from May to June, slightly less than the 0.6 percent economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected. The core inflation index, which strips out volatile food and fuel, climbed 3.5 percent over the past year.How quickly inflation will fall back to the Fed’s 2 percent target, which it tries to hit on average over time, is increasingly uncertain. It is hard to know how quickly the supply chain snarls that have complicated the price picture so far this year will clear up, or whether new ones will emerge. Climbing coronavirus cases around the world could make for continued disturbances in global production and shipping routes, ones that will hit just in time for back-to-school and the holiday shopping season. More

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    Federal Reserve Keeps Rates Unchanged but Cites ‘Progress’ Toward Goals

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    The central bank gave the clearest hint yet that it will soon begin to shift bond-buying from emergency mode.The chair, Jerome H. Powell, said the Fed was keeping interest rates unchanged and would continue to buy large amounts of government debt, but suggested that these purchases could taper off as recovery continued.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe Federal Reserve on Wednesday offered the most direct signal yet that it will begin to dial back its emergency support for the economy in the near future, as its chair, Jerome H. Powell, made it clear that policymakers will do so deliberatively and with plenty of warning.Fed officials voted to leave both of their key policy supports intact before wrapping up their two-day July meeting, holding interest rates near zero and continuing government-backed bond purchases unabated. Those two tools fuel economic demand by making money cheap to borrow and spend.But they spent the meeting debating when and how to slow the bond-buying program, which is expected to be the first step toward a more normal policy setting as the economy rebounds strongly from its pandemic stupor. A decision isn’t imminent, but officials used their July policy statement to signal that one is coming.The Fed had said in December that it would keep buying bonds at a steady pace — $120 billion per month — until it had made “substantial” further progress toward its two targets, stable inflation and maximum employment.“Since then, the economy has made progress toward these goals, and the committee will continue to assess progress in coming meetings,” the Fed’s policy-setting committee said in its postmeeting statement on Wednesday.Mr. Powell offered an even more detailed outlook for the purchase program during his subsequent news conference. He explained that officials had not yet decided on the pace or structure of the coming slowdown, and that there were a “range of views” on when it should happen.“We’re going to continue to try to provide clarity as appropriate,” Mr. Powell said, adding that this meeting had involved the first deep-dive discussion on those issues.Mr. Powell delivered another message: The Fed isn’t ready to withdraw support just yet. He said that while the economy was progressing toward “substantial” progress, “we have some ground to cover on the labor market side.”Investors have been keenly watching for any news on when and how the Fed will begin to withdraw from buying assets, worried that the announcement of a tapering program might whipsaw markets. Fed critics have been asking why the central bank continues to buy bonds, fueling an already-scorching housing market and pushing up sky-high stock prices.Fed officials are trying to strike a balance, ensuring they are prepared to slow stimulus measures as the economy strengthens while avoiding an abrupt pullback. The latter could undermine the Fed’s credibility and potentially roil markets, causing lending to dry up and slowing the recovery when millions of prepandemic jobs are still missing and risks to the economy persist.“They don’t want to cause a sharp and fast increase in interest rates — that would be detrimental,” said Roberto Perli, head of global policy research at Cornerstone Macro. “The labor market is still not where it should be.”Lingering threats to the outlook have been underscored by rising coronavirus cases in the United States and around the world tied to the Delta variant.Mr. Powell acknowledged risks from the variant, but he suggested that any economic pullback it drove might not be as severe as last year’s. Still, he said, “it might weigh on the return to the labor market,” noting that the Fed will be monitoring that “carefully.”But the Fed chair conveyed a generally optimistic tone about the economy on Wednesday.While he pointed out that the labor market had a lot of room left to heal, he also suggested that workers were lingering on the sidelines because they were afraid of the virus, had caregiving duties or were receiving generous unemployment insurance benefits. Those factors should fade as life returns to normal.The United States is on a path to a strong labor market, and “it shouldn’t take too long, in macroeconomic time, to get there,” Mr. Powell said.He discussed at length another reality of the reopening era: rising prices. As economic growth roars back, with strong consumer spending supported by repeated government stimulus checks, inflation is surging. That is partly the result of data quirks, but also because demand for washing machines, electronics, cars and housing is outstripping what producers can supply.The Consumer Price Index picked up by 5.4 percent in June compared with a year earlier, the quickest pace since 2008. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge has been slightly more muted, at 3.9 percent in May, but that, too, is well above the central bank’s 2 percent average inflation goal.“Inflation has increased notably” Mr. Powell said, adding that it is likely to remain elevated in coming months. But as supply bottlenecks abate, he said, “inflation is expected to drop back toward our longer-run goal.”Price gains could turn out to be higher and more persistent than Fed officials expect, Mr. Powell acknowledged. But expectations of where prices might head next seem consistent with the Fed’s goal, he said.When Fed officials say they expect today’s pressures to prove “transitory,” Mr. Powell said, they mean that increases today will not lead to ever-higher prices down the road.To put it even more plainly: A bag of flour might cost 5 cents more this year, but if the increase is transitory, it will not keep going up 5 cents with each passing year.“The increases will happen — we’re not saying they will reverse,” Mr. Powell said, but “the process of inflation will stop.”For now, officials are monitoring price increases but also staying focused on a different set of risks: About 6.8 million jobs are still missing compared with February 2020 levels. Workers are taking time to sort back into suitable employment, and the central bank wants to make sure the economic recovery is robust as they try to do that.Even when the Fed begins to dial back bond-buying, interest rates are likely to remain low. Long-running forces, including the aging population and rising inequality, have pushed them down naturally, and the central bank is expected to keep its main policy rate — the federal funds rate — at rock bottom, where it has been since March 2020.Officials have signaled that, barring a sustained burst in inflation or financial stability risks, they would like to leave interest rates near zero until the job market has returned to full employment. Their latest economic projections, released in June, suggested that most officials did not expect the economy to meet that high bar until 2023.Mr. Powell reiterated a commitment to seeing the recovery through.“The labor market has a ways to go,” he said. “We at the Fed will do everything we can to support the economy for as long as it takes to complete the recovery.” More

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    Fed Considers Tapering Bond Purchases as Economy Grows

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    Federal Reserve officials are gathering in Washington this week with monetary policy still set to emergency mode, even as the economy rebounds and inflation accelerates.Economists expect the central bank’s postmeeting statement at 2 p.m. Wednesday to leave policy unchanged, but investors will keenly watch a subsequent news conference with the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, for any hints at when — and how — officials might begin to pull back their economic support.That’s because Fed policymakers are debating their plans for future “tapering,” the widely used term for slowing down monthly purchases of government-backed debt. The bond purchases are meant to keep money chugging through the economy by encouraging lending and spending, and slowing them would be the first step in moving policy toward a more normal setting.Big and often conflicting considerations loom over the taper debate. Inflation has picked up more sharply than many Fed officials expected. Those price pressures are expected to fade, but the risk that they will linger is a source of discomfort, ramping up the urgency to create some sort of exit plan. At the same time, the job market is far from healed, and the surging Delta coronavirus variant means that the pandemic remains a real risk. Policy missteps could prove costly.The Fed’s balance sheet has grown, thanks to bond-buying.The Federal Reserve has swollen its balance sheet by buying bonds to bolster the economy during the pandemic, making it a bigger player in markets.

    Source: Federal ReserveBy The New York TimesHere are a few key things to know about the bond-buying, and key details that Wall Street will be watching:The Fed is buying $120 billion in government backed bonds each month — $80 billion in Treasury debt and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities.Economists mostly expect the central bank to announce plans to slow those purchases this year, perhaps as soon as August, before actually dialing them back late this year or early next. That slowdown is what Wall Street refers to as a “taper.”There’s a hot debate among policymakers about how that taper should play out. Some officials think the Fed should slow mortgage debt buying first because the housing market is booming. Others have said mortgage security buying has little special effect on the housing market. They have hinted or said they would favor tapering both types of purchases at the same speed.The Fed is moving cautiously, and for a reason: Back in 2013, markets convulsed when investors realized that a similar bond-buying program after the financial crisis would slow soon. Mr. Powell and crew do not want to stage a rerun.Bond-buying is just one of the Fed’s policy tools, and is used to lower longer-term interest rates and to get money chugging around the economy. The Fed also sets a policy interest rate, the federal funds rate, to keep borrowing costs low. It has been near zero since March 2020.Central bankers have been clear that tapering off bond purchases is the first step toward moving policy away from an emergency setting. Increases in the funds rate remain off in the distant future. More

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    Inflation Has Arrived, but Washington Isn’t Racing to Limit Price Pops

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    Policymakers, now more attuned to the costs of choking off growth early, are sticking by a patient approach as prices rise.Inflation has long been the boogeyman haunting the nightmares of economic policymakers from both parties — and controlling it has been a top economic priority. But as the economy reopens from pandemic shutdowns and prices spike, it is becoming clear just how much that conventional wisdom has shifted in recent years.After three decades of relative price stability and a long stretch of weak price gains, many economists and lawmakers had in recent years come to believe that trying too hard to avoid overheating the economy created its own risk by prematurely cooling growth and leaving workers on the sidelines.The tools that policymakers used to prevent overheating — raising interest rates and reining in government spending — also contributed to less hiring and slower wage growth. Policymakers have paid increasing attention to those trade-offs, especially as chronically slow price gains across the globe made government efforts to control inflation seem somewhere between futile and self-defeating.That view has remained mostly intact at the Federal Reserve and the White House even as prices pop, virus variants threaten to perpetuate supply-chain bottlenecks and some price increases, like rising rents, create the risk that high inflation might last for a while.The Biden administration is emphasizing the benefits of the current moment, which include higher wages and more bargaining power for workers, as it insists that inflation will fade over time. The Fed, which meets this week, is openly nervous about rising prices, but it isn’t doing anything abrupt to counteract them. It says it needs to weigh the risk of inflation against the threat of slowing a labor market that is still missing nearly seven million jobs compared with prepandemic levels.Republicans are condemning rising prices, warning that the administration needs to rein in its spending plans and that the Fed should withdraw support. Even some left-leaning economists have warned that things could get out of control and that central bank officials need to be on watch.Here is a snapshot of what is happening with inflation, including the risks, the rewards and how policymakers are thinking through a strange economic moment.Prices are up this year, and pretty markedly.Inflation is up across a variety of measures, and by significantly more than economists predicted earlier this year.The Consumer Price Index, a Labor Department gauge of how much a basket of goods and services costs to buy, rose 5.4 percent in the year through June. The Fed prefers a separate measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index. That gauge tracks both out-of-pocket expenses and the cost of things people consume but don’t directly pay for, like medical care. It climbed 3.9 percent through May.Prices have risen by more than Fed officials expected, based on both their public statements and their economic projections this year.Why the big jump? Some of it owes to temporary data quirks, which were expected to push inflation higher this year. Part of it has come as prices for airline tickets, hotel rooms and other pandemic-affected purchases rebound from last year, also as anticipated. But the surprisingly large part of the increase has come from a surge in consumer demand that is straining delivery routes and outstripping available supply for electronics, housing and laundry machines.That portion of the inflation is more tied to government policies, which put money into consumers’ pockets — and its future trajectory is a lot less predictable. Economists think the bottlenecks will fade, but by how much and how long it will take is uncertain.Those price increases could have a downside.Whether today’s inflation matters and warrants a response will depend on several factors.If, as the White House predicts, quick price gains fade as the economy returns to normal, they shouldn’t be terribly problematic. Households are likely to have to spend a little bit more on some goods and services but may also find that they are earning more. Workers are now seeing decent wage gains, though not quite enough to outpace price gains, and the labor market is expected to continue strengthening as inflation fades.The biggest price gains have also been concentrated in just a few categories, like used cars. Most families do not buy automobiles that often, so the hit from higher costs will not be as salient for consumers as an across-the-board rapid rise in prices for everything consumers buy, like clothing and milk.But if consumers and businesses come to expect higher prices and start accepting bigger price tags and demanding higher wages, that could broaden inflation and keep it elevated. That would be a problem. Rapid inflation makes life hard for people who live on savings, like retirees. If it outstrips pay gains, it can erode a consumer’s ability to buy goods and services. And if inflation becomes hard to predict, as it did in the 1970s and 1980s, it makes planning for the future hard for businesses and households.There are risks that inflation could take time to get back to normal.There are real reasons to worry that inflation could stick around. Supply-chain snarls are expected to fade with time, but new Covid-19 variants and renewed lockdowns in some countries could keep global trade chains from getting back to normal. That could keep prices for goods elevated. (On the flip side, Jason Furman at Harvard points out that renewed lockdowns would also probably drag down consumer demand, which could lead to softer price pressures.)There are other hot inflation risks. Wages are rising, which might feed into faster prices as employers try to cover costs. Rents — which were depressed — are accelerating, potentially a stickier source of inflationary pressure.If inflation becomes pernicious, the Fed has tools to contain it. The central bank is already coming up with a plan to slow its big bond purchases, which keep longer-term borrowing cheap and lift markets. It could also raise its main interest rate, which would trickle through the economy to slow lending and spending.“One way or another, we’re not going to be going into a period of high inflation for a long period of time, because, of course, we have tools to address that,” Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, testified this month. “But we don’t want to use them in a way that is unnecessary, or that interrupts the rebound of the economy.”A job fair in St. Louis last month. The Fed is nervous about rising prices, but it says it also needs to weigh the risk of slowing a labor market still missing seven million workers.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesBut there are also real risks to premature action.As Mr. Powell alluded to, policymakers do not want to move too hastily in response to the recent data. Many officials argue that it does not make sense to react to what is expected to be a short-lived price pickup by dialing back fiscal ambitions or weakening monetary support — policy changes that would reduce demand and lead to slower hiring down the road.Should the Fed pull back support for the economy before many of the 6.8 million jobs that have gone missing since the start of the pandemic return, it could lead to a painful situation in which workers end up stuck out of work.That would cost families paychecks, hurt the country’s potential for growth and tip the economic scales toward employers, who benefit when many available workers are competing for jobs.For decades, “the sensible adult consensus — that the most important thing was to protect against inflation — had a huge cost, and that cost was wages stagnating,” said Benjamin Dulchin, director of the organizing group Fed Up. “The Fed can err on the side of corporate interests and keeping wages lower, or it can err on the side of workers’ interests.”Today’s inflation could offer benefits.Inflation does have some winners. People who owe debts find that they are easier to pay off, and middle-class households who own houses may find that their values appreciate. Research has suggested that inflation in advanced economies can shrink inequality, for instance.But that isn’t even the argument the Fed and the White House are making: They simply do not expect the higher prices to last forever, and they think the short-term costs are worth the long-term benefits of helping the economy through a tough period.Some Democrats think that voracious hiring bolstered by government spending and central bank support will give workers the power to bargain for higher wages — an ability that might last beyond the inflationary phase. And they have been trying to foster a swift recovery from the pandemic downturn, getting people back into jobs and businesses back into full swing quickly.Officials are being patient, even as inflation surprises them.Government officials are setting economic policy today with an eye on the last battle. After the deep 2007-9 recession, the government cut back on spending early and monetary policymakers lifted interest rates before price gains had returned to their 2 percent annual inflation goal. Price gains proceeded to get stuck below that target, and the labor market recovery may have taken longer than it needed to, since the economy had less support.As that episode underlined, slow-moving global trends — including aging demographics and free trade — seem to keep a lid on price gains these days. In Japan and in Europe, policymakers have spent years battling to coax inflation higher. They are worried in part by the looming threat of deflation, which discourages consumption and crushes debtors, who find their pay stagnating or declining as their debt loads remain unchanged.America’s current bout of price pressures actually seems to be helping to guide consumer expectations, which had been slipping lower, back into the comfort zone.And a few heady inflation numbers are a good problem to have, if you ask Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist. The globe just experienced a devastating pandemic that was expected to wreck the economy.“In the current situation, the fact that the economy is booming and they didn’t quite plan for it is still a blessing,” he said. “It’s a rich man’s problem that we’re getting inflation.” More

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    Federal Reserve Chair to Testify Before Congress

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    When Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, appears before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, he will be testifying at a fraught moment both politically and economically, given the recent rise in inflation.The Consumer Price Index jumped 5.4 percent in June from a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2008 and a larger move than economists had expected. Price pressures appear poised to last longer than policymakers at the White House or Fed anticipated.In testimony on Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee, Mr. Powell attributed rapid price gains to factors tied to the economy’s reopening from the pandemic, and indicated in response to questioning that Fed officials expected inflation to begin calming in six months or so.He acknowledged that “the incoming inflation data have been higher than expected and hoped for,” but he said the gains were coming from a “small group” of goods and services directly tied to reopening.For now, he voiced comfort with the central bank’s relatively patient policy path even in light of the hotter-than-expected price data. He said that the labor market was improving but that “there is still a long way to go.”He also said the Fed’s goal of achieving “substantial further progress” toward its economic goals before taking the first steps toward a more normal policy setting “is still a ways off.” More

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    Inflation Likely to Remain High in Coming Months, Fed Chair Powell Says

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    Price gains are up “notably,” Jerome Powell told House lawmakers. That’s because of several temporary factors.Jerome H. Powell told House lawmakers that inflation had increased “notably” in the country’s reopening from the pandemic and would most likely stay higher in the next months before moderating.Pool photo by Graeme JenningsJerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, told House lawmakers on Wednesday that inflation had increased “notably” and was poised to remain higher in coming months before moderating — but he gave no indication that the recent jump in prices will spur central bankers to rush to change policy.The Fed chair attributed rapid price gains to factors tied to the economy’s reopening from the pandemic, and indicated in response to questioning that Fed officials expected inflation to begin calming in six months or so.Mr. Powell testified before the Financial Services Committee at a fraught moment both politically and economically, given the recent spike in inflation. The Consumer Price Index jumped 5.4 percent in June from a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2008 and a larger move than economists had expected. Price pressures appear poised to last longer than policymakers at the White House or Fed anticipated.“Inflation has increased notably and will likely remain elevated in coming months before moderating,” Mr. Powell said in his opening remarks.He later acknowledged that “the incoming inflation data have been higher than expected and hoped for,” but he said the gains were coming from a “small group” of goods and services directly tied to reopening.Mr. Powell attributed the continuing pop in prices to a series of factors: temporary data quirks, supply constraints that ought to “partially reverse” and a surge in demand for services that were hit hard by the pandemic.He said longer-run inflation expectations remained under control — which matters because inflation outlooks help shape the future path for prices. And he made it clear that if the situation got out of hand, the Fed would be prepared to react.“We are monitoring the situation very carefully, and we are committed to price stability,” Mr. Powell said. He added that “if we were to see that inflation were remaining high and remaining materially higher above our target for a period of time — and that it was threatening to uproot inflation expectations and create a risk of a longer period of inflation — then we would absolutely change our policy as appropriate.”For now, the Fed chair voiced comfort with the central bank’s relatively patient policy path even in light of the hotter-than-expected price data. He said that the labor market was improving but that “there is still a long way to go.” He also said the Fed’s goal of achieving “substantial further progress” toward its economic goals before taking the first steps toward a more normal policy setting “is still a ways off.”Fed officials are debating when and how to slow their $120 billion of monthly government-backed bond purchases, which would be the first step in moving policy away from an emergency mode. Those discussions will continue “in coming meetings,” Mr. Powell said.The central bank is also keeping its policy interest rate near zero, which helps borrowing remain cheap for consumers and businesses. Officials have set out a higher standard for lifting that rate from rock bottom: They want the economy to return to full employment and inflation to be on track to average 2 percent over time.The Fed’s guidance states that officials want to see inflation “moderately” above 2 percent for a time, and Mr. Powell was asked on Wednesday what that standard meant when price pressures were so strong.“Inflation is not moderately above 2 percent — it’s well above 2 percent,” Mr. Powell said of the current data. “The question will be where does this leave us in six months or so — when inflation, as we expect, does move down — how will the guidance work? And it will depend on the path of the economy.”Raising rates is not yet up for discussion, officials have said publicly and privately. The bulk of the Fed’s policy-setting committee does not expect to lift borrowing costs until 2023, based on its latest economic projections.Given Mr. Powell’s comments, that watchful stance is unlikely to shift, economists said.“We still don’t think higher inflation will result in a quicker policy tightening,” Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in response to Mr. Powell’s prepared testimony. “Asset purchases probably won’t start to be tapered until next year, with interest rates not raised until the first half of 2023.”The Fed is weighing the risks of higher inflation against the huge number of people who remain out of work. Congress has tasked the central bank with fostering both stable prices and maximum employment. While price pressures have picked up markedly, there are still 6.8 million fewer jobs than there were in February 2020, the month before pandemic layoffs started in earnest.That so many people remain out of work is something of a surprise, because employers report widespread labor shortages, and wage increases and signing bonuses abound as they try to lure talent.“Labor shortages were often cited as a reason firms could not staff at desired levels,” according to the Fed’s latest “Beige Book” of anecdotal economic reports from business contacts across its 12 districts. “All districts noted an increased use of nonwage cash incentives to attract and retain workers.”Mr. Powell said he expected people to return to work as health concerns abated and other issues keeping people sidelined faded, and he predicted that “job gains should be strong in coming months.” More