(Reuters) – Kansas City Fed President Esther George said Friday “there’s no question” the U.S. labor market is tight, adding that she would be looking carefully at how wage pressures and inflaton expectations unfold as she tries to gauge how close the economy is to the Fed’s goal of full employment.
“We are in a tight labor market today,” George said at the start of a Fed conference on energy, shortly after a Labor Department report showed U.S. employers added more than expected jobs last month as the latest COVID-19 surge receded. Policymakers will look at whether people on the sidelines of the labor market will reenter, which she said is likely, but could take a few years; “you have to watch the dynamics in our economy, and the pressures that are coming bear on inflation and on wages as a way to gauge where we are on the spectrum of achieving some of that employment mandate.”
(Reporting by Ann Saphir)
