Powell On Potentially Ending At Lower Participation Rate Vs. Feb 2020

Q: Are we going to end at a lower participation rate overall vs Feb 2020?

• A: There's a demographic trend underlying this; we would expect over time that participation would move down due to aging. The Q is how much we can get closer to the level of Feb 2020. "What we can do is try to create the conditions....ultimately we have the tools that we have which are essentially to stimulate demand and also to control inflation. It might be one of the two big threats to getting back to maximum employment is actually high inflation ... the evidence grows that it's going to take some time, and what we need is another long expansion,...that's what it would really take to get back to the kind of labor market we'd like like to see and to have that happen we need to make sure that we maintain price stability."
• That connection between price stability as a prerequisite for long expansion and therefore max employment is similar to comments Powell made in Congress a couple of weeks ago.