Bullard Says US Labor Market Is Tighter Than It Appears – FT

The US job market was tighter than it seems, said the president of the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, James Bullard, in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), adding that “could speed up the central bank’s deadline to remove some monetary stimulus from the economy“.

Key Comments:

“I am evolving towards a judgment in which the labor market should be interpreted as fairly tight, and I’m certainly seeing it in companies that say they will just go ahead and Wages for these types of workers will increase“.

“They go ahead and say, ‘Let’s pay some sign-in bonuses to get workers at the door‘, we are seeing some businesses that actually stay closed because they can’t find enough workers“.

“I would say we should reexamine what we think we expect from the job market.”

“And the reason I’m pushing people in that direction is that I think it’s more consistent with the anecdotal evidence that we’re getting, which is that it is very difficult to hire“.

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