Unemployment and Wage Inflation

Finally, traditional indicators also may be missing the mark in predicting persistent inflation.  In particular, in the June Summary of Economic Projections, most members of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee in effect professed that an unemployment rate of 4% or higher was necessary to attain the Fed’s long-term objective of 2% inflation.  However, the unemployment rate has now been below 4% for 21 straight months and, yet, since March of last year, year-over-year wage growth has drifted down from a peak of 5.9% to 4.3% last month.