Fed’s Evans: Natural U.S. jobless rate may be under 5%

MarketWatch ^ | 5-20-2015 | Todd Buell, WSJ

[Citizen Zed]

Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said Wednesday that it was by no means certain that the natural rate of unemployment in the U.S. is 5% and that it might be even be lower, suggesting that it might take even longer for inflation to get back up to the Fed’s 2% target.

“I’ve got the natural rate of unemployment at 5%, [but] my research staff has indicated it could be lower than that,” he said.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about that. As unemployment goes down, I’m also going to be looking to see what inflation is doing. Because if we’ve got a natural rate below 5%, we might not see inflation pick up until we go even further. That’s a complicated one.”

The dovish central banker, who has repeatedly advocated that the Fed wait until next year to raise rates, said, however, that he had an “open mind” about determining appropriate policy and could be convinced to change his mind if data surprised positively.

[Saltmeat]

Why doesn’t someone do a poll and determine what the real unemployment rate is? How is it that they can do a political poll and predict with accuracy the outcome of an election, but can’t use the same processes to determine the real rate of unemployment?

Just pick a number of representative households and poll the to see who is employed, underemployed or no longer looking for employment. Why won’t this work?

This would take the lying government bureaucrats out ot the picture.

[Aut Pax Aut Bellum]

The reason we don’t have inflation after 5 years of massive printing is because we are in a deflationary depression. By now we should by all rights have hyper inflation.
We will. It always starts as deflationary. Prices are already rising now.

[Pollster1]

The natural jobless rate under Obamacare is far higher than with individual freedom. We didn’t have to lose so many jobs - that was a choice made by democrats.

[Georgia Girl 2]

“How did you come up with 33.9 percent?”

I failed Math 105 in college and had to take it over? :-)

I didn’t think that figure looked right but I just ran it again and came up with another bad figure. I think the calculator is messed up. Its about 15 years old.

Anyway the government must know that we can all quickly figure out the 5% is a total lie.

[RipSawyer]

Apparently some cannot figure it out or won’t admit that they can. I didn’t believe five percent when it was being reported under George W. Bush and I know things were better then than now.

[Organic Panic]

If you consider collecting welfare, disability, or living in mom’s basement as jobs then yes, many people become instantly employed.