The U.S. Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy

These remarks are an update of remarks that I made at the European Economics and Financial Centre's Distinguished Speakers Seminar in London, U.K. on July 1, 2016.

I thank the Australian Business Economists for the kind invitation to be with you today, and I would like to say g'day to you all. I started coming to Australia about 30 years ago with my husband, who grew up in Canberra. I have to admit, I have not yet acquired a taste for Vegemite — my tastes run more toward lamingtons and Anzac biscuits — but Australians are so welcoming that it is always a pleasure to be Down Under.

As an economist and policymaker, I appreciate hearing the perspectives of market and business economists. Just as the different views expressed by my colleagues around the monetary policy table help to inform my own policy views, the insights of economists like you help to shape my own economic outlook. The chance to hear perspectives from this side of the Pacific is particularly welcome at this time because we live in a global economy. Today, I will focus my remarks on the U.S. economy and monetary policy. To help put the discussion into context, I will start with a brief overview of the Federal Reserve System. I should note that the views I'll present today are my own and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve System or my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee.

Federal Reserve Structure and Governance

The Federal Reserve System, established by Congress in 1913, is a decentralized central bank. It is independent within the government but not independent from the government. The structure is one of balance. Congress designed the Federal Reserve System to alleviate concerns that it would become dominated by financial interests in New York or political interests in Washington. The design includes representation from the rest of the nation, balancing public-sector and private-sector interests, and Wall Street and Main Street concerns.

The Federal Reserve System has 12 regional Reserve Banks and a seven-member Board of Governors in Washington that oversees those Banks. The governors, who serve the public, are appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate, the upper house of Congress. Governors serve staggered 14-year terms, which span several terms of the president and members of Congress. The length of the term is intended to insulate the governors from short-term political influence and allows them to take a longer-run perspective when setting monetary and financial regulatory policy. The chairman and vice chairman of the Board of Governors are chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate from among the sitting governors for four-year terms. They can be reappointed until their terms as governors expire.

The 12 Reserve Banks also operate in the public interest. They are distributed around the country in locations that were the centers of economic activity back when the Fed was established.¹ Each Reserve Bank has a nine-member board of directors who are chosen in a nonpolitical process. Three directors represent banks and six are nonbankers who represent business, agricultural, industrial, and public interests in the Districts they serve. The nonbank directors are responsible for choosing the Bank's president, who is subject to approval by the Fed's Board of Governors. This structure may seem pretty complicated, but it actually works quite well. Before the Fed was established, there were two earlier attempts at central banks in the U.S. Each lasted only 20 years. In contrast, the Federal Reserve recently marked its 100^th anniversary.

The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, was established in 1934 and is the body within the Federal Reserve System responsible for setting monetary policy. The FOMC holds eight regularly scheduled meetings a year in Washington. This 12-member Committee is made up of the seven members of the Board of Governors, the president of the New York Fed, and four other Reserve Bank presidents who serve on a rotating basis. As president of the Cleveland Fed, I vote every other year, as does the Chicago Fed president. The other presidents vote every third year. I note, though, that presidents who happen not to be voting members at the moment still participate in FOMC meetings. Thus, by design, the discussions at our meetings contain a mosaic of economic information and analysis from all parts of the country. This information helps inform our setting of national monetary policy in pursuit of the goals given to us by the U.S. Congress. These monetary policy goals, often called the Fed's dual mandate, are price stability and maximum employment.

The Economic Outlook

Our last FOMC meeting was held in mid-June and our next meeting will be two weeks from now. As is always the case, during this intermeeting period, Fed policymakers are evaluating economic developments and assessing the outlook. Of course, the anticipated consequences of the recent decision by U.K. voters to exit the European Union will need to be part of that assessment. This is a developing story, and how it plays out will ultimately determine its implications for the global economy and monetary policy. For the U.S. economy, while the risks and uncertainty surrounding the outlook have increased in the wake of the U.K. vote, FOMC members will be taking the time up to our July meeting to continue to evaluate whether conditions in the aftermath of the decision and other economic and financial developments will necessitate a material change in the modal outlook.

In thinking about the economic outlook, I try to stay focused on underlying fundamentals because they determine the outlook for the economy over the medium run, the time horizon over which monetary policy can affect the economy. In my view, the underlying fundamentals supporting the U.S. economic expansion remain sound. These include accommodative monetary policy, household balance sheets that have improved greatly since the recession, continued progress in the labor market, a more resilient banking system, and low oil prices. There are risks around all forecasts, but my modal forecast has been that over the next two years the U.S. economy will continue to expand at a pace slightly above its longer-run trend, which I estimate to be about 2 percent; that the unemployment rate will remain slightly under its longer-run level, which I estimate to be about 5 percent; and that inflation will continue to gradually return to the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target. Of course, even in the best of times, without the increased uncertainty of our current situation, there is some variation in growth and other economic indicators over time. The trick is to extract the signal about where the economy is headed from economic and financial market information that can often be quite noisy.

Economic growth

We've seen this kind of variability in the quarterly measures of U.S. GDP growth. Growth in the first quarter of the year slowed, although less so than originally estimated. Incoming information suggests that we are seeing a rebound of growth in the second quarter. This is very similar to the pattern we saw in 2014 and 2015. Consumer spending, which makes up about two-thirds of output in the U.S., has accelerated in recent months. The continued improvement in household balance sheets, growth in personal income, low borrowing rates, and relatively low oil prices have all buoyed consumer spending. In the U.S., the drop in gasoline prices by almost $1 per gallon between 2014 and 2015 saved the average household about $700. Although gasoline prices have moved up in the past couple of months, the U.S. Energy Information Administration now forecasts that the average price of gasoline will be down again this year, resulting in another $200 in cost savings for the average household. Some of those savings have been spent. For example, we've seen high levels of auto sales for the past two years. Some households likely saved part of the windfall instead of spending it, or used it to pay down debt. Either way, stronger household balance sheets will help support future consumption spending.

The U.S. housing sector has been gradually recovering for some time. In the aftermath of the housing crash, house prices in the U.S. began rising again in mid-2011, and for the past two years, they have been increasing at a 5 to 6 percent annual rate. At the aggregate level, homeowners lost an unprecedented $7 trillion in real estate equity during the housing crash, but the increases in house prices have allowed homeowners to recover nearly all of that. Sales of existing homes, which make up the bulk of home sales in the U.S., are now back near the levels seen before the housing bubble run-up in the early to mid-2000s. I am using the pre-bubble level as my benchmark because we shouldn't want to see the housing market return to bubble proportions. Other parts of the housing sector haven't yet fully recovered. Construction and sales of new homes have been rising at a gradual pace, but they are not back up to their pre-bubble levels. Starts remain below the levels consistent with projections of household formation over the longer run, and in some markets, the supply of housing hasn't kept up with demand. In addition, the type of housing being built has shifted. Over the past five years, increases in multifamily housing starts have significantly outpaced increases in single-family starts. This may reflect a shift in preferences toward more urban living, but it likely also reflects the desire on the part of some people who lived through the crisis to rent rather than own. Mortgage rates are low but households are being careful in not taking on more mortgage debt than they can handle, and banks are lending to those with good credit quality. My assessment of conditions is that the recovery in housing should continue at a moderate pace.

In contrast to housing, business fixed investment remains weak. While the sharp drop in oil prices since mid-2014 benefited consumers and many businesses, firms in the drilling and mining sector, their suppliers, and regions whose economies depend on the energy sector have been hurt. We have seen the effects in parts of the Cleveland Fed District where steel production has been down and firms tied to energy have had to cut jobs and reduce investment. But even outside of the energy sector, business investment has been soft despite generally accommodative financial conditions. Manufacturers have been investing but mainly to maintain current operations rather than to expand. Part of the softness in investment reflects weakness in demand outside of the U.S., which has hurt U.S. exports.

Indeed, firms exposed to U.S. trade have had to operate in a very challenging environment. The nominal value of the U.S. dollar has appreciated about 19 percent on a broad trade-weighted basis since mid-2014. This has placed a significant drag on manufacturing output and export growth. But the slowdown in the rate of appreciation in recent months was starting to diminish the drag on growth from net exports.

Of course, global growth, commodity price changes, and currency fluctuations are not necessarily independent events. For example, a portion of the more than 50 percent decline in oil prices since mid-2014 likely reflects expectations of weaker growth in China and other countries, although supply factors have likely played a greater role. The appreciation of the U.S. dollar since mid-2014 has reflected expectations that real growth in the U.S. will continue to be stronger than growth abroad, as well as projected real interest rate differentials between the U.S. and other economies. We have to be careful not to think of these shocks as independent events and merely sum their effects. We live in an interconnected global economy. Changes in prices and currency values are one way economies reach a new equilibrium after a shock.

While I would expect investment to begin to pick up as overall economic growth expands, the weakness in investment and the associated slow pace of productivity growth pose a risk for the longer-run growth of the U.S. economy. Structural productivity growth is a key determinant of the longer-run growth of output and increases in living standards. And investment in capital, including human capital, is a key determinant of productivity growth. In the U.S., labor productivity growth has risen at only a half of a percent annual rate over the past five years. Part of this weakness is cyclical: weak investment during the recession and early part of the expansion contributed to slow productivity growth over this five-year period. But the weakness in investment and the slow productivity growth have persisted in the U.S. and in several other countries. Productivity growth is very difficult to forecast, so the softness may reverse itself, or it may be longer lasting and reflect a structural issue. If it's the latter, then the longer-run growth rate of the U.S. economy may be lower than the 2 percent growth I've been assuming.

As this overview suggests, some parts of the U.S. economy have fared better than others. But overall, economic growth has proven to be resilient and at a pace slightly above trend. The pace has been sufficient to generate significant progress in labor markets.

Labor markets

Since the trough in early 2010, the U.S. labor market has added more than 14 million jobs, which is about 10 percent of employment, and the unemployment rate has fallen more than 5 percentage points from its peak of 10 percent in late 2009. Over the past two years, there have also been significant improvements in other gauges of the under-utilization of labor, such as measures tracking the number of part-time workers who would rather work full-time and the number of people who have only been looking for work sporadically or have been discouraged from looking at all because they don't think they will find a job. Increasingly, we are hearing from businesses that they are having trouble finding qualified workers. Early on, such reports were concentrated in high-skilled occupations but now they are expanding to include lower-skilled jobs in a broader set of industries.

There has been some month-to-month variation in recent employment reports for the U.S. Payroll growth slowed considerably in May, raising the question of whether we were at the start of a reversal from the considerable progress that's been made in labor markets, or whether the weak reading was the type of transitory change we typically see during expansions. Hiring rebounded in June, alleviating that concern.

Based on my read of the available data, I believe the U.S. labor market remains sound and that we'll continue to see further improvements in the job market, although the pace of improvement will necessarily slow given the progress that's already been made. It's important to put monthly jobs reports into context. One thing we have learned is that we shouldn't take too much signal from one or two monthly reports. Payroll growth has slowed several times during this expansion, only to pick up again. In addition, we should expect to see some slowdown in the pace of job growth as the economy nears full employment. Over the past three months U.S. firms added an average of 147,000 jobs per month. That pace exceeds the 75,000 to 120,000 per month range of trend employment growth estimates from various models that take into account the aging of the population and other demographic factors affecting labor force participation. So it is enough to put further downward pressure on the unemployment rate.

Other incoming data remain consistent with an improving labor market. Claims for unemployment insurance are low. The rates of job openings and hiring are high. The quit rate is also high, suggesting that workers are confident enough to be looking for better jobs. The unemployment rate is low, and while the labor force participation rate has varied from month to month, averaging through the recent variability we see that the level of the participation rate is consistent with estimates of its longer-run downward trend. Another positive is that there are signs in the data and from anecdotal reports that wages may be accelerating.

All of this suggests to me that labor market progress will continue. At the same time, I do not want to underestimate the difficulty that many people have had finding work during the recession and slow recovery and that many continue to have, or the persistent differences in the employment situation faced by different demographic groups in the U.S. The deep recession and slow recovery have exposed and exacerbated longer-run workforce development issues affecting U.S. labor markets. Technological advances and globalization are changing the nature of available jobs and the skill sets needed to perform those jobs. I believe that government programs and private-public partnerships, including educational assistance, retraining programs, and apprenticeships, can be effective in addressing these long-run labor force challenges and should be brought to bear. On the other hand, I do not believe that monetary policy would be effective in addressing these longer-run problems. So from the standpoint of what monetary policy can do, I believe the economy is basically at maximum employment, one part of the Fed's dual mandate.

Inflation

The other part of the Fed's dual mandate is price stability. Inflation has been running below the Fed's goal of 2 percent for quite some time. Low inflation partly reflects the effects of earlier declines in the price of oil and other commodities, which began in mid-2014, as well as the appreciation of the dollar, which has held down the prices of nonpetroleum imports into the U.S.²

The most recent inflation data have been encouraging and in accord with the pattern anticipated by the FOMC. Inflation measures have gradually risen as the effects of previous declines in oil prices and dollar appreciation have begun to fade. Headline PCE and CPI inflation, as measured by the year-over-year changes in the underlying indices, have moved up from the very low levels recorded last year and have been stable around 1 percent in recent months. The core inflation measures, which omit food and energy prices because they tend to be volatile, have also been moving up and are above the headline numbers. Another gauge of underlying inflation, the Cleveland Fed's median CPI inflation rate, rose to over 2.5 percent in May, its highest level in over seven years.³

Stable inflation expectations are an important component of inflation dynamics. Even in the face of sizable declines in energy prices, inflation expectations have been relatively stable in my view. At this point I expect them to remain reasonably well anchored, but I am monitoring readings carefully. There are various measures of inflation expectations. Survey-based measures have tended to be more stable than those based on market data. Inflation compensation, as distinct from expectations, is the difference in yields between nominal U.S. Treasury securities and Treasury inflation-protected securities. Inflation compensation has fallen by more than the survey measures of expectations, but various models suggest that the movement more likely reflects changes in liquidity premia and inflation risk premia rather than changes in inflation expectations. Over a period of heightened market volatility and safe-haven flows into U.S. Treasury securities, I take less of a signal about inflation expectations from the market-based measure of inflation compensation than from the survey measures. The Cleveland Fed's model of inflation expectations provides somewhat of a compromise by incorporating survey measures, as well as market data on nominal Treasury yields and inflation swaps. Its measure of 5-year inflation, 5 years from now has been stable, at about 1.9 percent, in recent months.⁴

Given these readings on inflation and inflation expectations, so long as the real side of the economy continues to perform as expected, I anticipate that inflation will continue to gradually move back to our goal of 2 percent over the next couple of years.

Monetary Policy

In setting monetary policy, the FOMC assesses both realized and expected progress on our statutory longer-run goals of price stability and maximum employment. That assessment encompasses a wide range of economic information — the official economic statistical releases and financial market indicators, as well as the information FOMC participants garner by speaking with contacts in our regions.

At its June meeting, the FOMC decided to maintain the target range of the federal funds rate at ¼ to ½ percent. The FOMC indicated that with gradual adjustments in the stance of monetary policy, it anticipates further improvements in the economy. This was reflected in the Summary of Economic Projections also released at the June meeting. The median projection among the FOMC participants shows growth at about 2 percent over the next three years, consistent with the median estimate of longer-run trend growth; the unemployment rate coming down a bit from current levels and remaining under the median longer-run estimate of 4.8 percent through 2018; and inflation gradually moving up to 2 percent by the end of 2018.

In June, the FOMC also indicated that economic developments will likely warrant only gradual increases in the fed funds rate. Of course, the timing of those rate increases and the overall slope of that gradual path will depend on how the economy, the economic outlook, and the risks evolve.

Indeed, in the June projections, the median fed funds rate path of appropriate policy was somewhat shallower than in the last set of projections in March — partly reflecting somewhat slower growth projected for this year, and partly reflecting a lower estimate of the fed funds rate over the longer run.

I supported the decision not to change rates in June. My support did not reflect a fundamental change to my outlook. The progress being made on our policy goals and the outlook suggest that a gradual upward path of interest rates continued to be appropriate. A gradual path means that monetary policy will remain accommodative for some time to come, providing support to the economy and insurance against downside risks. As I said, I believe that the progress in labor markets has been good and will continue, and I view the inflation data as supportive of a gradual return to target. Now, some might argue that in an abundance of caution, we should wait for clarity on these issues, and I agree that there are risks to acting too soon. But there are also risks to forestalling rate increases for too long when we are continuing to make cumulative progress on our policy goals. Waiting too long increases risks to financial stability and raises the chance that we would have to move more aggressively in the future, which poses its own set of risks to the outlook. I believe waiting too long also jeopardizes our future ability to use the nontraditional monetary policy tools that the Fed developed to deal with the effects of the global financial crisis and deep recession. If we fail to gracefully navigate back toward a more normal policy stance at the appropriate time, then I believe there is a non-negligible chance that these tools will essentially be off the table because the public will have deemed them as ultimately ineffective. This is a risk to the outlook should we ever find ourselves in a situation of needing such tools in the future. Of course, such a risk is hard to measure and is not one we typically consider. But we live in atypical times, and we need to take the whole set of risks into account when assessing appropriate policy.

So why, then, did I think it appropriate not to raise rates in June? The reason was timing. There was considerable uncertainty about the outcome of the upcoming U.K. referendum on membership in the European Union. The vote was being held a week after the June FOMC meeting. It was clear there was going to be volatility in financial markets surrounding the vote. If the vote favored exit, there was the potential of disruption in markets. Given that I do not think U.S. monetary policy is behind the curve yet, I saw little cost in waiting to take the next step.

After the U.K. Referendum

It is an understatement to say that market volatility increased on the outcome of the U.K. referendum. We are now in a world of heightened economic and political uncertainty, and I expect we will be living with uncertainty for a while as the U.K. and Europe establish the terms of their new relationship.

When a shock like this hits financial markets, the first task of central bankers is to ensure that there is sufficient liquidity and funding to allow markets to continue to function in an orderly way in the midst of extreme volatility, and to assure the public that we are prepared to act as necessary. The Bank of England, the finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 countries, and several other individual central banks, including the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Federal Reserve, put out statements indicating that they stand ready to use established liquidity tools to support market functioning.⁵ Central banks are monitoring the situation for possible contagion across financial markets. The considerable efforts undertaken by policymakers in response to the global financial crisis to increase the resiliency of the financial system, including higher capital and liquidity requirements, mean that financial institutions are now in considerably better shape to withstand short-run volatility while continuing to extend credit to households and businesses. Despite the volatility, markets have generally been functioning in an orderly manner. Investors have been moving funds to safe-haven assets, which has led to lower yields on U.S. Treasuries and appreciation of the U.S. dollar and Japanese yen against the U.K. pound. Reflecting concerns about where U.K. property values may settle, some commercial real estate funds in the U.K. have suspended redemptions. Central banks are continuing to monitor financial market developments closely.

Ultimately, global economies will adjust to the new trading and labor relationships negotiated between the U.K. and Europe. Economists continue to evaluate what the magnitude of the effects on the global economy will be. This will depend on how the situation evolves, so the evaluation will take some time to fully develop. In the U.S., in determining whether a material change in our medium-run economic outlook is needed, monetary policymakers are assessing the consequences of the U.K. referendum in the context of other economic and financial developments. While the U.K. represents about 4 percent of world output and global trade, London is one of the major financial centers of the world. About 4 percent of U.S. exports go to the U.K., which is a relatively small share, but the financial ties between our two countries are larger. Barring any major disruption in financial and banking markets, one of the main mechanisms through which the exit decision could affect the U.S. economy is through dollar appreciation, which, depending on its persistence and magnitude, could dampen U.S. export growth and cause a delay in the return of inflation to 2 percent. Slower growth outside of the U.S. would also lower demand for U.S. exports. But it is important to remember that exports make up only about 12 percent of U.S. output; so whatever the reduction in export growth, it would mean a smaller reduction in overall GDP growth.

Heightened and persistent uncertainty is another factor that can affect the economy. When the exit decision was announced, investors moved away from risk assets. Higher credit spreads and lower equity prices, coupled with continued uncertainty, could put firms and households in a wait-and-see mode, reducing economic activity for a time. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has highlighted the dampening effect uncertainty could have on economic performance in the U.K. and steps have been taken there to ease credit conditions. These include reducing the countercyclical capital requirements for banks and encouraging banks to continue lending to households and businesses.⁶

As I said, it is too soon to judge the full magnitude of such effects. However, despite the uncertainty, between now and our meeting later this month, FOMC policymakers will continue to evaluate the full set of economic and financial developments to judge whether the medium-run U.S. economic outlook has been meaningfully affected and whether that changes our assessment of appropriate U.S. monetary policy going forward. Monetary policymakers cannot let the lack of economic clarity distract us from our important mission. We must continue to use the best available models, analysis, and judgment to assess the situation. As an FOMC member, I will remain focused on and committed to setting monetary policy to promote the Federal Reserve's longer-run goals of price stability and maximum employment for the benefit of the public.