to assess. thus far in the recovery and to this day, there is little question that the economy has remained far from maximum employment, so measurement difficulties were not our focus. but as the attainment of our maximum employment goal draws nearer, it will be necessary for the fomc to form a more nuanced judgment about when the recovery of the labor market will be materially complete. as the fomc ’ s statement on longer - term goals and policy strategy emphasizes, these judgments are inherently uncertain and must be based on a wide range of indicators. 3 i will refer to the shortfall in employment relative to its mandate - consistent level as labor market slack, and there are a number of different indicators of this slack. probably the best single indicator is the unemployment rate. at 6. 7 percent, it is now slightly more than 1 percentage point above the 5. 2 to 5. 6 percent central tendency of the committee ’ s projections for the longer - run normal unemployment rate. this shortfall remains significant, and in our baseline outlook, it will take more than two years to close. 4 other data suggest that there may be more slack in labor markets than indicated by the unemployment rate. for example, the share of the workforce that is working part time but would prefer to work full time remains quite high by historical standards. similarly, while the share of workers in the labor force who are unemployed and have been looking for work for more than six months has fallen from its peak in 2010, it remains as high as any time prior to the great recession. 5 there is ongoing debate about why long - term unemployment remains these figures are based on the summary of economic projections ( sep ) submitted in conjunction with the march 2014 fomc meeting. the sep is an addendum to the fomc minutes and is available at board of governors of the federal reserve system ( 2014 ), “ minutes of the federal open market committee, march 18 – 19, 2014, ” press release, april 9. see the fomc ’ s statement on longer - run goals and monetary policy strategy ( pdf ), as amended effective january 28, 2014, which is available on the board ’ s website. see the sep in board of governors, “ minutes of the federal open market committee, march 18 – 19, 2014, ” in note 2. the share in cps employment of persons working part time for economic reasons rose from 3 percent prior to the recession to 6. 5 percent in november

meets with the central banks of the other 18 countries that use the euro – and where jointly decisions are made. 1 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches also together with the ecb, and with supervisors from the other countries of the eurozone, we supervise the banks. take, for example, the teams that supervise the largest dutch banks, such as abn amro, ing or rabobank. these are very international teams. so if you would visit our temporary offices next to the amstel station in amsterdam, where we await our return to the frederiksplein, you will just as easily hear dutch as english, and even french or italian or other european languages. but that's only amsterdam. if you come to work for us, it is very likely that before long you will head to frankfurt, where the ecb has its offices. or to any other european financial capital – to work, for example, on how to regulate bitcoin, or on how to keep payment systems safe from cybercrime. or you could even be stationed at a major european bank for several months as member of an onsite supervisory team. for an organization that was founded more than 200 years ago, that's pretty dynamic. and we have to be. because the financial sector is dynamic. take, for example, the area where i am mainly responsible for : banking supervision. these are exciting times for banking. and this has everything to do with digitalization. let's take for example all the new players in the market. even as short as 5 years ago, we all paid with our bank - issued debit or credit cards. companies who wanted to take out a loan went to their bank or intermediary. now, we pay with our smart phones using apple pay and google pay, or on web shops using innovative payment service providers. and companies who sell their goods on market places like bol. com or amazon can obtain credit through those platforms. moreover, banks are increasingly moving their ict processes into the cloud, cooperating with large bigtech cloud providers like amazon, microsoft or google cloud. so new players are coming into the financial sector and becoming increasingly important. these players are often tech players, be they bigtechs or fintechs. we are also seeing a change in business models. we see a move toward platforms that are a sort of one - stop - shop for consumers, providing them with all kinds of services, financial but also non