Yellen Still Sees ‘Significant’ Under-Use of Labor Resources
Source: Bloomberg
By Jeff Kearns and Craig Torres Aug 22, 2014 11:23 AM ET
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said too many Americans are still out of work even after gains made during the five years of economic recovery.
“The economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment” since the Great Depression, Yellen said today in a speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economics conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At the same time, she underscored the Federal Open Market Committee statement last month that “underutilization of labor resources still remains significant.”
Yellen’s remarks appeared in line with the message from minutes of the July FOMC meeting, which showed officials growing more aware that labor markets are approaching full employment. Yet determining when the job market has recovered fully is difficult, given the “depth of the damage” from the recession, she said, and policy makers must look at a “wide range” of indicators.
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As she has in the past, Yellen said there’s “no simple recipe” for appropriate policy, and officials are “particularly attentive to the need to clearly describe the policy framework we are using.”
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/yellen-says-fed-sees-significant-under-use-of-labor-resources.html
