Fed Links Rate Outlook to Range of Data; Drops 6.5% Jobless Threshold

The Federal Reserve said it will look at a wide range of data in determining when to raise its benchmark interest rate from zero, dropping a pledge tying borrowing costs to a 6.5% unemployment rate.

“A highly accommodative stance of monetary policy remains appropriate,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement today following a meeting in Washington that was the first led by Chair Janet Yellen. In determining how long to keep rates low, the committee will assess progress towards its goals of maximum employment and 2% inflation, it said.

That assessment takes into account a “wide range of information,” including labor market conditions, inflation expectations and financial markets. The Fed also reduced the monthly pace of bond purchases by $10 billion, to $55 billion.

The Fed is overhauling forward guidance after unemployment declined toward its 6.5% threshold for a rate increase faster than policy makers predicted. Yellen last month told lawmakers that the unemployment rate alone isn’t an adequate gauge of economic health and “there’s a great deal of slack in the labor markets still that we need to work to eliminate.”

The FOMC repeated that it will reduce asset purchases “in further measured steps at future meetings.” At the same time, “asset purchases are not on a preset course.” The committee announced $10 billion reductions in purchases at the previous two meetings.

“Growth in economic activity slowed during the winter months, in part reflecting adverse weather conditions,” the Fed said. Even so, “there is sufficient underlying strength in the broader economy to support ongoing improvement in labor-market conditions.”

The central bank’s preferred gauge of consumer prices climbed 1.2% in the year through January and hasn’t exceeded its 2% goal since March 2012. That gives policy makers “ample scope to continue to try to promote a return to full employment,” Yellen testified to lawmakers Feb. 27.

Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota dissented, saying the statement “weakens the credibility of the committee’s commitment to return inflation to the 2% target from below and fosters policy uncertainty that hinders economic activity.”

Seventy-six percent of economists in a Bloomberg survey March 14-17 predicted the Fed would drop its unemployment threshold. Economists also predicted a $10 billion reduction in the monthly pace of bond purchases, according to the median of responses.

Yellen, 67, took over as Fed chair last month after three years as deputy to Ben S. Bernanke. In that role, she helped shape the communications policies the Fed wielded as it sought to nurture a recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

After cutting interest rates to zero in 2008, the Fed embarked on large-scale asset purchases as well as forward guidance intended to convince investors that borrowing costs would stay low for a long time.

Starting in December 2012, the FOMC said the federal funds rate would stay low at least as long as unemployment was higher than 6.5% and the outlook for inflation didn’t exceed 2.5%.