MNI TRANSCRIPT: Powell on Labor Market Tightness

     WASHINGTON (MNI) - The following is the portion of a transcript from

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's press conference after the FOMC meeting

Wednesday:

     Q: Before the July meeting, you said something colorful, you said to call

something hot you would need to see some heat referring to the labor market. To

expand on Nancy's questions, seems like the wage focus has been explored but

what would you need to see to call the labor market hot in that case? Would it

be a rather a change in the headline number of gains or in the unemployment

rate?

     A: Wages, really. There is so many other measures that suggest that the

labor market is, I like to say labor market is strong, I don't want to say that

it's tight. Someone asked me a question about a hot labor market. That was in

the Humphrey Hawkins hearings. The labor market is strong. I don't know that

it's tight because you are not seeing wage increases, ultimately, if it's tight

those should be reflected in higher wage increases. It does come down to that.

We look at countless measures of labor market, labor utilization and there are

so many. It's too many to count. But the one that is suggesting that, it's a

healthy number, the 3.1 percent average hourly earnings number is a decent

number, 3.7 percent for production supervisory workers is more healthy.

Ultimately though, we would like to see, to call it hot, you would want to see

heat, you would want to see higher wages.

--MNI Washington Bureau; +1 202 371 2121; email: brooke.migdon@marketnews.com

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