The focus on jobs represents a historic shift for the central bank that began with the 2008 financial crisis and has intensified in the face of four years of middling economic growth. But how much influence the central bank wields over unemployment remains an open question: It cannot direct businesses to hire or inspire entrepreneurs to create jobs. Meanwhile, warnings have grown louder that the quest to bring down unemployment could have unintended consequences — including stoking inflation that a generation of central bankers worked to tame.
Yet there remains consensus inside the Fed that the gamble is worth it. There is even a sense that partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill means that the central bank alone is in a position to help put Americans back to work.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor
via Fed shifts focus to jobs – The Washington Post.
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