Fed Chair: Economy Has Made Considerable Progress Since 2009 - East Idaho News
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Fed Chair: Economy Has Made Considerable Progress Since 2009

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020314 JanetYellenOfficialPortrait?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1408727468344United States Federal Reserve(JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.) — The U.S. economy now has more jobs than before the Great Recession, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen announced Friday during her annual speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

“If you take a look at some of the things she points out in her speech, first off she says we’ve created more jobs in the recovery than were lost in the downturn, and that in May of this year we finally exceeded the previous peak in January of 2008,” ABC News’ Chief Business and Economics Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis says.

“She also said that job gains this year have averaged 230,000 a month; that’s up from 190,000 a month that happened in the last two years. And the unemployment rate, at 6.2 percent in July, has now declined nearly 4 percent since the 2009 peak. Of course, 2009 was the midst of the Great Recession. That’s when unemployment was at its very worst,” Jarvis adds.

[ CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL TEXT OF YELLEN’S SPEECH ]

Yellen said little, however, about the direction of interest rates, which have been at 0 percent since the Great Recession, leaving investors uncertain about when the Fed will begin raising them.

“The bottom line is we know the Fed eventually is going to raise interest rates, but the question is when. And now you have some that are saying, ‘Well, the economy’s improving enough. The Fed will probably do it sooner rather than later.’ And then you have others that say, ‘Janet Yellen is what’s known as a dove, and she’s not going to be interested in raising interest rates for a much longer time; potentially very late next year, even early the following,'” says Jarvis.


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