Powell repeats 'lot of slack in the labor market,' far from return to full employment

I want to thank Jason Furman and David Laibson for inviting me to join your economics class. I often found it difficult in introductory economics to connect the abstract concepts in the textbooks to the real-world issues I cared about. So the one message I hope you remember from today is that economics provides powerful tools to enable you to analyze and affect the issues that matter most to you.1 With jobs down by 10 million relative to pre-pandemic levels, one issue that matters fundamentally to all of us is achieving full employment. So today I want to talk about both the Federal Reserve's responsibilities with regard to full employment and different approaches to assessing where we are relative to that goal. The belief that the federal government has a responsibility for full employment has its roots in the Great Depression. It was given statutory expression at the end of the Second World War when policymakers and legislators feared that the millions of American soldiers returning to the labor market would face Depression-era conditions.2 In tweet at 10:30am: *Fed's Brainard: Real Unemployment Rate Closer to 10%, Not 6.3% tweet at 10:34am: Fed's Brainard: - Monetary policy will continue to provide support for the economy - US jobless rate is closer to 10% - While expectations have picked up, inflation remains low - Economy is still far from price and job goals, will take time to reach them #Fed $USD

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 12.2 million barrels per day during the week ending February 19, 2021 which was 2.6 million barrels per day less than the previous week’s ...