In a speech, Fed Governor Philip Jefferson said, “core goods inflation has started to come down. Several indicators suggest that housing services inflation is likely to come down in the coming months. There is more uncertainty surrounding inflation in core services excluding housing. Over time, we’ll learn more about inflation dynamics in this sector.”
“The inflation outlook for this nonhousing category of core services partly depends on whether growth in nominal labor costs comes back down, and recent data suggest that labor compensation has indeed started to decelerate somewhat over the past year,” he also noted.
Jefferson also rejected the idea of changing Fed’s longer-run inflation objective of 2%. He said that would “introduce an additional risk by calling into question the FOMC’s commitment to stabilizing inflation at any level because it might lead people to suspect that the target could be changed opportunistically in the future”.
