(Reuters) -Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin on Thursday said his conversations with business leaders suggest cooling in the U.S. labor market is coming from slower hiring rather than a rise in layoffs, giving the central bank time to figure out its next move. “I’m actually pretty optimistic that over the next few months we’re going to see good readings on the inflation side,” Barkin said at a virtual event put on by the National Association for Business Economics.
“I think you’ve got some time in a healthy economy to figure out whether this is an economy that’s gently moving into a normalizing state that will allow you to, in a steady deliberate way, normalize rates or … is this one where you really do have to lean into it.”
The Fed last week kept its policy rate in the 5.25% to 5.50% range, where it has been for more than a year now, but also signaled interest rate cuts would likely start next month, as long as price pressures continue to ease and the labor market slows without cracking.
A Labor Department report on Friday that showed a jump in the U.S. unemployment rate and a slowdown in hiring helped spark a global stock market rout that continued into Monday before equities partially recovered.
Investors and analysts, worried that the weak labor market report showed the U.S. was headed for a recession, began pricing in a more aggressive path for Fed rate cuts.
Barkin said he does not see the case for a rate cut right now.
“Jobs are being added. I think that’s a clear fact. People aren’t getting laid off. That’s a clear fact. And there’s a lot more people in the workforce,” he said, offering that increase as one reason for the rise in the unemployment rate.
Going into last week’s Fed meeting, he said, the case for a rate cut would have been either absolute certainty the labor market was on a precipice, or that the fight against inflation had been one – neither of which he agreed with.
“You’ve got some room to see more on the labor side, you’ve got to see more on the inflation side,” he said.
The measure by which the Fed targets 2% inflation — the personal consumption expenditures price index – cooled to 2.5% in June, and economists anticipate next week’s reading on consumer prices will show a slight firming but not enough to keep the Fed from cutting rates.
Barkin noted that U.S. stock prices after the recent decline are still up about 10%, and do not represent a “cataclysmic event.”
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