Federal Reserve press conference, 2025-07-30 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Colby Smith, New York Times): Thank you. Colby Smith with the New York Times. Two of your colleagues called for a quarter-point cut today, and I’m wondering what aspects of their argument were most compelling to you and how you are weighing their views against those on the Committee who, as of the June forecast, were in the camp of the Fed holding interest rates steady for the remainder of the year. And, and just in terms of the June SEP in particular, is that still the best representation of where the core of the Committee is?
Answer: So on, on the dissents, you know, what you—what you want from everybody and also from a dissenter is a clear explanation for—of what your thinking is and what are the arguments you’re making. And that’s—we had that today. So I think, basically, this was—this was quite a good meeting all around the table where people were—you know, thought carefully about this and put their positions out there. As I mentioned, you know, the, the—sort of the majority of the Committee was of the view that inflation’s a bit above target, maximum employment is at target. That calls for modestly restrictive—in my way of thinking, a modestly restrictive stance of policy for now. But we had two dissenters who, I think—you know, you want that clear thinking and, and, and, you know, expression of your thinking, and we certainly had that today, I think all around the table. In terms of—you asked about the June SEP. You know, I wouldn’t—you’re right that that’s what it—that’s what it says, and that may—that may well—I, I couldn’t point to it six weeks later as, as expressing people’s thought—you really can’t do that. We don’t run an SEP, and I don’t like to substitute in my own estimate of what the SEP might be. We don’t have one. So I’ll just say that, you know, we, we haven’t made any decisions about September. We’ll be monitoring all the incoming data and asking ourselves whether the federal funds rate is in the right place.

Question (Victoria Guida, Politico): Hi. Victoria Guida with Politico. When it comes to the renovations of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters that the Administration has been looking into, do you see their interest in that issue as being directly tied to the President’s push to get you to lower interest rates?
Answer: Not for me to say. I will say, we had a—we had a nice visit with the President. It was an honor to host him. It’s not something that happens very often at the Federal Reserve—to have the President come over, let alone to visit a building—but it was—it was a good visit.

Question (Claire Jones, Financial Times): And just to follow on, if I may, to Andrew’s question, I think the amount of imputed data in CPI now is up to 35 percent. I mean, is there any discussion of that as well? Is there any consideration of looking at—into alternative measures, data scraping and so on, in order to just ensure you’ve got a good read on what’s happening to prices in the U.S. economy? Thank you.
Answer: Yeah, we’re—so we’re monitoring the situation. We do, of course— I mean, as you know, during the pandemic, we looked at a whole lot of new kinds of data. People are looking at big data sets that you can get from all sorts of places. And we do all of that. But at the same—we really need—the government data really is the gold standard in data, and we need it to be—you know, to be good and be able to rely on it. And we’re not going to be able to substitute for that. But if—we have to make do with what we have, but I certainly hope that we get what we need.

Question (Maria Eloisa Capurro, Bloomberg): And just to follow up on what my colleagues were asking about the dissents: Governor Waller said that the labor market is on edge, and he was pointing to weaknesses on the private sector. I was wondering, you’ve said that the main number to look at is the unemployment number overall, but what was the discussion about the state of the private jobs market?
Answer: So I’m not going to talk about any individual’s—you know, any individual’s comments. I wouldn’t do that. But, look, I think what we know is that private- sector job creation, you know, certainly in the last report—we’ll see on Friday—but had come down a bit. And, and if you—if you take the QCEW adjustment seriously, with it—it may be even low—maybe close to zero. But the unemployment rate is still—was still low. So, what that’s telling you is that, that, you know, demand for workers is slowing, but so is the supply. So that’s a—it’s in balance, oddly enough. You’ve got a very low unemployment rate, and it’s kind of been there for a year as job creation has moved down, but also we know that, you know, because of immigration policy really, the flow into our labor forces is just a great deal slower. And those two things have slowed more or less in tandem. If you look at things, like I mentioned, quits, look at wages—wages are gradually cooling—look at vacancies to unemployment, those things have been pretty stable for—they haven’t really moved a lot in a full year. So I think if you take the totality of the labor market data, you’ve got a solid labor market. But I think you have to see that there are downside risks. It’s not—you don’t see weakening in the labor market, but I think you’ve got downside risks in a world where unemployment’s being held down because both demand and supply are declining. I think that’s—it’s worth paying close attention to it, and we are.