Barkin - Declaring Victory Enticing But Won't Say That

Barkin ('24 voters) speaks in a moderated discussion:

• Declaring victory on inflation is very enticing but you’re never going to hear me do that. We have a labor market that is at historic levels of strength, all the metrics are very strong, and inflation is coming down. I’m very supportive of being patient to get to where we need to get. At this point, the trade-off is getting into better balance, but still needs work to be better on inflation.
• You could well have pressure on prices. More broadly, we had twenty years before the pandemic where businesses knew they had no pricing power. You’ve had two years of significant price increases. I do think businesses feel they have a little more pricing power than they used to.
• The data that has been coming in over the last couple months has been remarkable. Demand is still very healthy and still a tight labor market. We haven’t had two years of under 4% unemployment in over fifty years. The last seven months have been at our target for core inflation. The drum beat you hear is the soft landing. The challenge on inflation is that disinflation isn’t that broad - services and rent inflation have both stayed more elevated. We’ll just have to see whether it’ll stay sustainably down, which would be terrific, or if there is still more inflationary pressure to come.