Channeling Jerome Powell "Jobs are Plentiful"
- During this week’s FOMC decision press conference, Jerome Powell reiterated his belief that the federal funds rate is sufficiently restrictive to reduce inflation back to 2%. As supporting evidence, he noted that the percentage of workers stating “jobs are plentiful” has declined to pre-COVID levels, suggesting that labor market tightness has eased considerably.
- Occam asks an identical jobs-are-plentiful question daily, which allows for real-time insight into the evolution of attitudes towards the availability of jobs and an accurate forecast of the Fed’s eventual data release. Consistent with Powell’s observation, occam predicted that the jobs-are-plentiful response had in fact returned to pre-COVID levels. We see also that it continues to decline, which suggests a continued easing of labor market conditions.
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