Wall Street Journal (03/30/15) Kate Davidson
The U.S. Federal Reserve is “groping” to determine the current full-employment level, according to former chairman Ben Bernanke. Fed officials are trying to decide whether the labor market is strong enough to weather an increase in interest rates from near zero.
“It’s even more complicated than it was before,” Bernanke said at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “The unemployment rate used to be the only number you had to look at. Now of course there are many dimensions. …It’s much harder to make an assessment.”