Press conference exchange between JONNELLE MARTE and Fed Chair Jerome Powell:

user: Hi, Chair Powell. Jonnelle Marte from Bloomberg. As you noted, the labor market is now in many ways back to where it was before the pandemic. I wondered if you could comment on how officials are viewing that. So do you think that there still needs to be more cooling in the labor market to bring inflation all the way down to 2 percent, or is there any sense that maybe the labor market is more vulnerable now to higher rates now that many of those imbalances have eased?

assistant: Sure. So by, by so many measures, the labor market was, was overheated two years ago. And we’ve seen it gradually move back into much better balance between supply and demand. So, what have we seen? We’ve seen labor force supply come up quite a bit through immigration and through recovering participation. That’s ongoing, mostly now through the immigration channel. But still, we’ve had some increases in prime-age labor force. In terms of on the demand side, you know, we’ve seen—well, we’ve seen quits moving down. We’ve seen job openings moving down. We’ve seen wage increases moving from very, very high levels a couple of years ago back down to more sustainable levels. We have seen unemployment creep up now sixth-tenths over the course of, of a year or so very, very gradually. So you put all that together—what you have is still-low unemployment, still 4 percent unemployment—historically low. But it’s moved up a little bit—it’s softened a bit—and, and, you know, that’s an important statistic. But, but more than that, you’ve got strong job creation. You, you have payroll jobs still coming in strong, even though, you know, there’s an argument that they may be a bit overstated but still they’re, they’re still—they’re strong. So that’s what we see. We, we watch the labor market, of course, and the economy as a whole—but the labor market very carefully—and that’s what we see. We see gradual cooling—gradual moving toward better balance. We’re monitoring it carefully for signs of, of something more than that, but we really don’t see that.

user: As a quick follow-up—the surveys that make up the jobs report are, are showing different tales. There’s been some divergence, especially, we saw, in the last report that we got on Friday. So how do you interpret that, and, and how does it change your view on the labor market?

assistant: So sometimes it’s—you can’t reconcile the differences. You just have to, have to—have to look at it and, and try to understand. And that’s why it always makes sense to look at a series, you know, in 6—in 3, 6, and 12 months of things rather than just one report. But you’re right to point to the last report, where it was your—job losses in the household survey—job gains, big job gains in the establishment survey. So, I mean, we’re left with ambiguous results, and we have to deal with that uncertainty around data. Nonetheless, the overall picture is one of a strong and gradually cooling—gradually rebalancing labor market. Job openings, while they’ve come way down, are still, you know, greater than the number of unemployed people. The jobs–workers gap is still a significantly positive number—greater than it was before the pandemic. So, overall, we’re looking at what is still a very strong labor market but not the superheated labor market of two years ago or even one year ago.