Thank you, Dean Dunham and the University of St. Thomas for the opportunity to speak to you today. Given that this event is co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Club of Minnesota, and I taught at Notre Dame for 13 years, I will lead off with this thought: Go Irish!
When I last spoke on January 16, the data we had received up to that point was very good—three- and six-month measures of core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation were running right at 2 percent, which is our goal for total inflation, the labor market was cooling but still healthy, and real gross domestic product (GDP) was likewise growing but expected to moderate in the fourth quarter. I argued then that the data was “almost as good as it gets.” And I argued that because the economy was doing so well, we could take our time and collect more data to ensure that inflation was on a sustainable 2 percent path. There was no rush to cut rates any time soon.
Since then, we received data on fourth quarter GDP as well as January data on job growth and consumer product index (CPI) inflation. All three reports came in hotter than expected. GDP growth came in at 3.3 percent, well above forecasts. Jobs grew by 353,000, well over forecasts of less than 200,000, and monthly core CPI inflation came in at 0.4 percent, which was much higher than it had been for the previous six months.
So, the data that we have received since my last speech has reinforced my view that we need to verify that the progress on inflation we saw in the last half of 2023 will continue and this means there is no rush to begin cutting interest rates to normalize monetary policy.
Last week’s report on consumer prices in January was a reminder that ongoing progress on inflation is not assured. The uptick in inflation in that report was spread widely among goods and services. This one month of data may have been driven by some odd seasonal factors or outsized increases in housing costs, or it may be a signal that inflation is stickier than we thought and will be harder to bring back down to our target. We just don’t know yet. While I believe inflation is likely on track to reach