Fed's Goolsbee Says he's Undecided About a December Interest Rate Cut

Manuel

Summary:

On the labor market side, Goolsbee said he sees stability in the unemployment rate, which stands at 4.3%, and other measures that are less affected by population changes or immigration policy.

Chicago Federal Reserve president Austan Goolsbee said he is undecided about whether to cut interest rates again in December.

The threshold for cutting again is higher, he said, given inflation concerns and lack of official economic data.

"I'm not decided going into the December meeting," Goolsbee told Yahoo Finance in an interview Monday. "I am nervous about the inflation side of the ledger, where you've seen inflation above the target for 4.5 years and it's trending the wrong way."

Goolsbee, who voted alongside other officials to cut rates by a quarter percentage point to a new range of 3.75% to 4%, said he had penciled in two rate cuts for this year, which have now happened. He said he remains worried about "front-loading rate cuts," noting that core inflation over the past three months has been running at 3.6% on an annualized basis, while core services inflation has been closer to 4% for the same period. The Fed has an inflation target of 2%.

"That's worrying because that's going the wrong way," he said. "If we're just counting on that to go away because it's transitory, that makes me uneasy."

On the labor market side, Goolsbee said he sees stability in the unemployment rate, which stands at 4.3%, and other measures that are less affected by population changes or immigration policy.

"If you look over the last 12 months, the unemployment rate has not been going up," he said.

Goolsbee added, "If the job market starts to deteriorate in a more significant way, then that would change the balance of risk."

What to expect before December

As the government shutdown enters its second month, vital data like the jobs report, Consumer Price Index (CPI), and more go unreported.

Even if the government reopens before the Fed's next policy meeting on Dec. 10, Goolsbee said he expects Fed officials will have to rely primarily on private-sector jobs data to gauge the health of the job market and will have very little on the inflation picture.

That's fueling his hesitation, which was echoed Friday by four other Fed officials who struck a hawkish tone on further rate cuts.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during the press conference last Wednesday following the policy meeting that there was division over whether to cut rates again in December, saying that it's "not a foregone conclusion, in fact, far from it." He noted that with the last two rate cuts, there's a feeling that the central bank is 150 basis points closer to neutral on its benchmark policy interest rate — a level designed to neither spur nor slow growth — than a year ago and that there's a growing chorus that "maybe we should wait."

Kansas City Federal Reserve president Jeff Schmid said Friday he favored no rate cut at last week's policy meeting, feeling that inflation is "too high." Dallas Fed president Lorie Logan and Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack, who are not voting members this year, said Friday they also would have preferred to hold interest rates steady. And Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic, also not currently a voting member, said he was convinced, along with the majority, that a quarter-point rate cut was appropriate, but he had some reservations.

Goolsbee said he is currently "a little more worried" about inflation than the job market. The Chicago Federal Reserve recently started releasing a Labor Market Indicator, which calculates the unemployment rate using official government data along with private sector data. That measure as of Oct. 27 still stood at 4.3%.

Payroll growth turned negative in September as measured by ADP. Last week, companies from Amazon to UPS announced mass layoffs, while the Beige Book from October showed more employers lowering headcount due to weaker demand, policy uncertainty, and AI.

When asked whether payroll growth has decelerated further since officials have received official government data post-shutdown, Goolsbee said that it might have — and that's why he's undecided about whether to cut again going into the next meeting.

"So, I am a little wary, and my threshold for cutting is a little bit higher than it was at the last two meetings," he said.

Source: Reuters

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