Federal Reserve press conference, 2018-06-13 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Mark Hamrick, Bankrate): Mark Hamrick with Bankrate. You talked earlier about wage growth and your basic message to workers. How confident are you that when we do see stock buybacks and the like, the workers will get whatever your view of that share is as well and the wage hikes in the near term and in the foreseeable future? Thank you.
Answer: You know, we don’t—we don’t have the tools to control that. If companies choose to—companies in our system are free to do what they can—what they need to do once they’ve—once they’ve made profits and have cash to distribute. They can distribute it to their shareholders, they can buy—either through dividends or through buybacks. They can pay their workers. You know, the part—and, you know, we don’t play a role in those decisions. The part that we focus on is maximum employment. That’s our mandate. So we view maximum employment as the maximum sustainable level of employment, meaning it’s not so much that it will cause the economy to overheat. And so I think we’ve been committed to that. I think we take that obligation very seriously. And, you know, over time, when—when labor markets are strong and companies are hiring, we should see higher wages. But, again, we don’t really have the tools that will address the distribution of profits and that kind of thing.