{"id":531892,"date":"2026-03-19T01:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T01:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/531892\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T01:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T01:37:12","slug":"tackling-a-weakened-job-market-could-be-more-difficult-for-the-fed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/531892\/","title":{"rendered":"Tackling a weakened job market could be more difficult for the Fed"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this week\u2019s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, every single one of the policymakers present surely had the central bank\u2019s so-called \u201cdual mandate<\/a>\u201d in mind. The mandate lays out two goals to promote a strong economy \u2014 maximum employment and stable prices. <\/p>\n

Prices are not very stable right now. Consumer price inflation is still hovering above the Federal Reserve\u2019s target of 2%, while producer prices at the wholesale level were rising strongly even before the latest oil shock from the war in Iran. And achieving maximum employment could also be a challenge for the Fed, with a job market that lately has been slowing down<\/a> or maybe even stalling out.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor some time, it\u2019s been clear the market has weakened,\u201d said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at consulting firm RSM.<\/p>\n

Over the last 12 months, the economy added 156,000 jobs. Over the year before that, it added more than a million. <\/p>\n

But the market has stabilized quite a bit recently<\/a>, said Christine Cooper, chief U.S. economist and managing director at CoStar Group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had some job losses in February, we had job gains in January, some losses in December, and (they) seem to kind of offset each other,\u201d Cooper said. <\/p>\n

She said that with the Trump administration cutting immigration<\/a>, and baby boomers retiring, slower job growth might not be such a big problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we have fewer people in the labor supply, we need fewer jobs to be added each month,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n

But with little net job growth, there\u2019s a sharp uptick in long-term unemployment<\/a>, said John Leer, chief economist at the polling firm Morning Consult.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou continue to see people not being able to find jobs once they were laid off,\u201d Leer said.<\/p>\n

And workers are starting to fall behind financially, said Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at jobs website Indeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the stagnancy we\u2019ve seen across many sectors in the labor market, it\u2019s not surprising to me we\u2019ve seen wage growth decline,\u201d Ullrich said.<\/p>\n

The wages employers are posting for new hires on Indeed are up just 2.1%<\/a> from this time last year. Consumer prices are up 2.4%<\/a>. And that brings things back to the \u201cdual mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brusuelas said the Fed can\u2019t attack both ends of it at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the oil and energy shock which is shaping up to be the largest since the 1970s, the Federal Reserve is going to find itself in a tension between price stability and maximum sustainable employment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Control over inflation<\/a> will be the first order of business for the Fed, Brusuelas said, before it does anything to stimulate the labor market \u2014 however much it might be struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrice stability is a precondition of maximum sustainable employment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because without price stability,<\/a> employers won\u2019t feel confident enough in the economy going forward or have the financial resources to ramp up hiring again.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this week\u2019s Federal Open Market Committee meeting, every single one of the policymakers present surely had the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,61491,101,4084,2800,97249,538,131876,70751],"class_list":["post-531892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-dual-mandate","tag-economy","tag-employment","tag-federal-reserve","tag-fomc","tag-job-market","tag-price-stability","tag-wage-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}