mark it's held for the past two years, the longest stretch in five decades. and inflation - as measured by the personal consumption expenditures ( pce ) price index - 1 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches continued to decline from its 40 - year high of about 7 percent in mid - 2022, reaching about 2 - 1 / 2 percent last year. given that we are in a museum that houses an actual lunar module - and all eyes are on plans to return to the moon - i cannot resist the temptation to use the mission to send astronauts to the moon as a metaphor for the economy. like traveling to the moon and back, inflation shot up, then came back down. and as with the apollo missions, it's the safe return home that's essential. while we've seen great progress toward achieving our goals, the journey is not yet over, and i am very focused on making sure we complete this mission successfully. a strong, more balanced labor market i'm going to spend some time digging deeper into the trends behind both sides of our dual mandate goals. i'll start with employment. as you'll recall, when the economy recovered from the pandemic, the labor market turned red hot. demand for workers far exceeded supply, and that imbalance contributed to rapid wage growth and high inflation. now, the labor market - both in the nation as a whole and here in the second district - has shown signs of returning to something closer to normal. nationally, many indicatorssuch as quits rates and surveys of perceptions of availability of workers and jobs - have returned to around pre - pandemic levels. throughout this process of getting into better balance, the labor market has remained strong. the current unemployment rate of 3. 7 percent is near my estimate for the unemployment rate that is likely to prevail over the longer run. and job growth continues to be solid. despite the very real progress in restoring balance, two important indicators point to lingering tightness in the labor market : job openings and wage growth. job vacancies, which reached all - time highs in the red - hot labor market of 2022, have trended lower since then, but are still quite elevated relative to pre - pandemic norms. and while we have seen measures of wage growth come down from their pandemic - era peaks, they remain above pre - covid averages. the return trip of inflation that leads me to the other side of our

population. looking back, people used to be concerned about overpopulation. for example, in the first edition of an essay on the principle of population ( 1798 ), thomas r. malthus argued that, even though a population increases geometrically, food increases only arithmetically, and thus population growth constrains an enhancement in the living standard per capita. overpopulation also had been a concern in japan for a long period until recently. 10 in fact, economic growth can be achieved even under a declining population, which might be a headwind for the economy. taking the case of ehime prefecture as an example, gross prefectural product has increased moderately in recent years despite a continuing decline in the following argues that economic growth leads to openness, generosity, mobility, and democracy in a society : friedman, b. m., the moral consequences of economic growth ( new york : knopf, 2005 ). 9 there are arguments that dematerialization has progressed in advanced economies, whereby, despite the economic growth, the consumption of such items as energy and mineral resources as well as the emissions of carbon dioxide have declined. see mcafee, a., more from less ( london : simon & schuster, 2019 ). 10 tadokoro, m., " jinkoron no hensen " [ overpopulation or underpopulation? : japan's discourses on demography in retrospect ], hogaku kenkyu, vol. 84, issue 1 ( january 2011 ) : 63 - 90. total population in the prefecture ( chart 15 ). an international comparison shows that there is no correlation between the real gdp growth rate per capita and the population growth rate ( chart 16 ). aside from that, there is no correlation between the inflation rate and the population growth rate either. looking from the supply side, sources of economic growth roughly can be divided into three elements : capital, labor, and knowledge in a broad sense, including technologies and skills. among these, knowledge is definitely important in achieving economic growth. in the first place, before we use capital and labor, we need a certain level of knowledge to decide what kind of goods and services to produce and consume. even during the post - war rapid economic growth period in japan, the contribution of labor input was small while that of capital and knowledge was large ( chart 17 ). with regard to labor, the current increase in labor force that reflects a decline in the number of unemployed and an increase