Martin Wolf FED Enflasyon

Öncelikle linki verelim.

 The Fed’s analysis suggests that labour market slack is no longer an important downward factor, while a series of temporary downward shocks are also now in the past. So, the Fed believes, inflation will soon move back towards its target.

Why might this view be wrong? 

One possibility is that more labour market slack still exists than the unemployment rate suggests. The ratio of employment to population for those aged 25 to 54 is still well below previous cyclical peaks. 

The rate of part-time employment is also somewhat elevated. 

While involuntary part-time employment may have helped support labour force participation and facilitated stronger engagement with the workplace than the alternative of unemployment, it also appears to have weakened wage growth”. 

Yet most other measures of labour market pressure are back to pre-recession levels. So even if US wage growth is well contained, this might not last.

Another factor is inflation expectations. This cuts two ways. At the moment those expectations are well anchored, the only big worry being a decline in market expectations of inflation (or inflation risk) more than five years hence. Such expectations might feed into behaviour, generating a self-fulfilling prophecy of low inflation. This would counteract the symptoms of the labour market pressure.