(Bloomberg) -- US economic data points to an economy that’s expanding while price growth is slowing, but the progress isn’t sufficient for the Federal Reserve to declare victory on inflation, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said. 

“The economy is still growing — unemployment is still 3.9% and as you showed a little bit ago, inflation does seem to be settling. So all that’s good,” Barkin said in an interview with Fox Business Monday. “But the job’s not done, and so you have to keep on until you get the job done, and we’ll see where we land.” 

US central bankers held the benchmark policy rate steady for a second time earlier this month to gather more information on the economy before their final meeting of the year on Dec. 12-13. Inflation is cooling but is still too high with the consumer price index, minus food and energy, rising 4% in October from a year earlier. While the Fed targets a different measure of price growth, the goal is 2%.

Barkin, who will be a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee in 2024, said earlier this month that some economic slowing will be required to bring inflation down further. Last week, he said he’s not convinced inflation is on a clear path toward the central bank’s 2% target despite “real progress” curbing price pressures in recent months.  

“What I’m hearing is a normalizing economy and a good way to look at it is year-over-year consumer-spending growth, year-over-year retail sales,” Barkin said. “Those numbers look much more like trend numbers than they do like the frothy numbers.”

On Monday, the Richmond Fed chief reiterated that his focus is on returning inflation to the central bank’s goal. 

“I see inflation being stubborn, and that makes the case for me for being higher for longer.” 

Asked how long he sees interest rates staying high, Barkin said that would depend on ow inflation evolves. 

“Inflation convincingly coming back to target — that’s my marker. And you can get there a lot of different ways. But I’m still looking to be convinced that price-setters in this economy have gotten back to where they were three or four years ago, which was an understanding that above-normal price increases just weren’t a management lever.”

The Fed will release minutes from the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 FOMC meeting on Tuesday. Officials held the benchmark lending rate steady in a range of 5.25% and 5.5%, but economic reports leading into the meeting showed broad-based strength.

(Updates with more comment from Barkin in ninth paragraph.)

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