Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference in Washington, DC on September 18th.
Mandel Gunn/AFP/Getty Images
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his central bank colleagues are keenly aware of the weakening labor market.
“The labor market remains strong by many measures, but it’s actually cooling,” Powell said at an economic conference in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this week. “If you’re out of work now, it’s going to be harder to find work than it was two years ago when the labor market was very tight.”
At the same time, Powell and other Fed officials have also said they don’t want to see the labor market deteriorate further, with a majority pushing for a half-point rate cut last month compared to a more typical quarter. That’s why I voted. point cut.
Fed Director Michelle Bowman, who supported a quarter-point cut at the previous meeting, said the unemployment rate, which rose from 3.7% at the beginning of this year to 4.2% as of August, was due to “a slump in employment due to the entry of new job seekers and new entrants.” It mainly reflects the Those re-entering the workforce are taking longer to find work, while layoffs remain low. ”
But other factors are contributing. “The mismatch between the skills of new employees and the jobs available,” Bowman said at a banking conference in Charleston, South Carolina, earlier this week. In other words, people looking for work cannot find a job because they do not have the qualifications that employers are looking for in candidates to fill vacancies.
