michelle w bowman : closing remarks - " gender and career progression " closing remarks by ms michelle w bowman, member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system, at the joint bank of england, federal reserve bank of new york and european central bank conference on “ gender and career progression ”, european central bank, frankfurt am main, 21 october 2019. * * * congratulations on what i have no doubt was a productive and thought - provoking day, though one, i am sure, that also underscored the many remaining challenges for women and minorities in the professions of economics and finance. i want to thank our hosts, the european central bank, who put so much work into making this conference a success, as well as the conference organizers from all three sponsoring institutions — the ecb, federal reserve, and the bank of england. i also want to express my appreciation to the many researchers from universities and from other central banks, as well as the members of women's and minority committees of economics and finance associations from around the world, who are attending the conference in frankfurt. i wish that i could have been there with you to participate in the discussions. i found the conference program to be particularly interesting, and i look forward to federal reserve staff coming back to washington to share what they learned from the research and discussions. at the federal reserve, we greatly value this conference, not only for the interactions that our staff have while they are there, but also when they bring back what they learn and share it with our staff. last year, we had over 200 staff members from across the organization attend summary presentations in dc given by several staff members who had attended the conference in london. in fact, staff in washington had a " watch party " to view the webcast of today's panels. the topics of today's conference, including papers on the promotion of women, the role of culture and institutions, and the dynamics of publishing, conferences, and seminars, will all spur additional conversations and ideas for action among staff at the federal reserve. in my view, central banks have a responsibility to be leaders in addressing diversity and inclusion, not only for our own institutions, but also because of our influence on the profession as a whole. part of the value of this conference is that we, as central banks, can promote the study of these issues and discuss concrete steps that we can take together to address them. certainly, we take diversity and inclusion issues to heart at the federal reserve. 1

tomorrow's jobs report to alter my view that we should be focused 100 percent on reducing inflation. since i last spoke about the economic outlook on september 9, we have received two important pieces of data on inflation for august, consumer price index ( cpi ) and the price index for personal consumption expenditures ( pce ). 2 both reports confirmed that overall inflation remained much too high in august. though gasoline prices fell, which was very welcome news for consumers, food prices increased notably. core pce inflation, which strips out the volatile categories of food and energy, moved up to 0. 6 percent for the month, which implies an annualized rate of inflation of about 7 percent in core goods and services. furthermore, core pce inflation is not only high, but very 1 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches persistent, with monthly prints of core pce inflation at an annualized rate averaging about 5 percent this year. these numbers indicate that inflation is far from the fomc's goal and not likely to fall quickly. this is not the inflation outcome i am looking for to support a slower pace of rate hikes or a lower terminal policy rate than projected in the september 2022 sep. and, though there are additional data to come, in my view, we haven't yet made meaningful progress on inflation and until that progress is both meaningful and persistent, i support continued rate increases, along with ongoing reductions in the fed's balance sheet, to help restrain aggregate demand. as far as achieving our dual mandate, this is a onesided battle. we currently do not face a tradeoff between our employment objective and our inflation objective, so monetary policy can and must be used aggressively to bring down inflation. let me turn to the troubling persistence of inflation. in the past couple of inflation reports, housing services has been a major contributor to measured inflation. in the latest inflation reports, shelter prices rose 0. 7 percent on a monthly basis. housing has a large weight in price indexes, as households spend a sizable amount of their incomes on housing services. the combination of high monthly inflation and a large weight in measuring overall prices means that shelter inflation is a key driver of overall inflation. moreover, shelter inflation is a particularly persistent component of inflation and why i am focused on closely watching shelter inflation in determining my outlook for u. s. inflation. unfortunately, the message is that shelter inflation will likely remain high for several months, meaning overall core pce inflation will continue to