Fed Gov Tarullo: Mon Pol Can Help Address Long-Term Unemplymnt

MNI | Deutsche Börse Group, April 9, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

WASHINGTON (MNI) – Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo Wednesday night argued that monetary policy can play an important role in helping the nation’s long-term unemployment, saying the Fed right now should not be overly concerned with how much of the slow pace of job creation is due to structural factors outside its control.

"The very accommodative monetary policy of the past five years has contributed significantly to the extended, moderate recoveries of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment," Tarullo said in remarks prepared for the Levy Economics Institute’s Hyman Minsky Conference.

And to underline that he does not favor tightening monetary policy anytime soon, Tarullo said because of the modest growth in place for several years, "it seems less likely that we will experience a growth spurt in the next couple of years that would engender concerns about rapid wage pressures and changes in inflation expectations."

Voicing his concerns about slow U.S. productivity growth, widening income inequality, and long-term unemployment, Tarullo stressed that while monetary policy "cannot be the only, or even the principal," tool in counteracting these longer-term trends, "that is not to say it is irrelevant."

"Monetary policies directed toward achieving the statutory dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability can help reduce underemployment associated with low aggregate demand," he added, a statement that echoes Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s commitment to tackling the nation’s jobs crisis.

"To the degree that monetary policy can prevent cyclical phenomena such as high unemployment and low investment from becoming entrenched, it might be able to improve somewhat the potential growth rate of the economy over the medium term," he said.

Appointed to the Fed board by President Barack Obama in 2009, Tarullo has a permanent vote on the Fed’s policymaking Federal Open Market Committee.

Yellen said she still sees "considerable slack" in the labor market in a March 31 speech, and Tarullo said reducing labor market slack can help lay the foundation "for a more sustained, self-reinforcing cycle of stronger aggregate demand, increased production, renewed investment, and productivity gains."

"Similarly, a stronger labor market can provide a modest countervailing factor to income inequality trends by leading to higher wages at the bottom rungs of the wage scale," he said.

There is uncertainty among both Fed officials and economists regarding how much the high unemployment is due to cyclical factors like low demand, or more structural issues such as a skills mismatch between jobseekers and would-be employers.

Tarullo argued that there is not "as sharp a demarcation between cyclical and structural problems as is sometimes suggested," as "by promoting maximum employment in a stable inflation environment around the FOMC target rate, monetary policy can help set the stage for a vibrant and dynamic economy."

Still, Tarullo advised the FOMC to proceed pragmatically in crafting policy.

"We should remain attentive to evidence that labor markets have actually tightened to the point that there is demonstrable inflationary pressure that would place at risk maintenance of the FOMC’s stated inflation target (which, of course, we are currently not meeting on the downside)," he said. "But we should not rush to act preemptively in anticipation of such pressures based on arguments about the potential increase in structural unemployment in recent years."

"In this regard, the issue of how much structural damage has been suffered by the labor market is of less immediate concern today in shaping monetary policy than it might have been had we experienced a period of rapid growth during the recovery," he said.

Outside of actions being taken by the Fed, Tarullo also called on fiscal policymakers to also take a more forceful approach in helping the economy.