…The FED is very comfortable with the state of employment…
Certainly has improved but average weeks unemployed is still very high after six years. Down from 40 weeks in the depth of the recession to 28 weeks, much higher than the 12 weeks when there was actually full employment.
The number of part time workers for economic reasons also remains very high after six years of monetary stimulus. Way down from the depths of the recession but still historically high. About 5.5 million versus about 3.2 million during a period of real full employment at the turn of the century.
October 2015
A best way to help low-wage workers?
…Thus, raising the federal minimum wage reduces the mobility of low-skilled workers significantly. A more efficient way of increasing the purchasing power of these workers, without the side effects of reducing their unemployment, their chances of getting out of poverty, and their likelihood of progressing to a middle-class income level, is the EITC, which the literature has found to increase the employment of low-skilled adults and the income available to their families, to significantly reduce economic inequality and poverty, and even to improve the academic performance of children of recipients.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/beyond-bls/a-best-way-to-he…
Economists. Pick the two worst years for the economy and employment since the Great Depression and draw those general conclusions. Bizarre. A lot of economists at the Fed.
Effective Federal Funds Rate
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FEDFUNDS
Bottomed about 1.0 August 2003 and peaked about 5.0 September 2007. About a 10% annualized return on the S&P 500 for those four years. Fear not the Fed. Usually either way too early or way too late.
I wish I had a dime for every time I heard “don’t fight the Fed” 2000-01. As Greenspan et. al. panicked and slashed rates the exact thing to do was to fight the Fed. Probably the better bet but of course I lived a 17% mortgage. The words spilled on 0.25. Unbelievable.