Three Federal Reserve officials on Monday said they didn’t think the jobs market was stalling, even if employment figures in April came in far below expectations.
The economy added 266,000 jobs in April, well below market expectations that exceeded one million.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said he expects the labor market to continue to expand at a healthy pace for the rest of the year.
In a Monday morning interview with CNBC, Evans blamed the poor reading on sectors “experiencing growing pains” and also trouble with job-matching and lack of child care.
“I’m looking for continued strong employment growth over the rest of the year,” Evans told the business news network.
“Hopefully, [the April report] is just a one-month-kind-of-thing and we’re going to get to better employment. I certainly think so because we’ve got a lot of support,” he said, referring to fiscal stimulus and accommodative monetary policies in place.
In an interview on Bloomberg Television, Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan on Monday also said he expects job growth to be strong this year.
Kaplan, however, is on the other side of the ledger when it comes to the central bank’s asset-purchase program. He wants the Fed to soon begin discussions on when it might scale back its asset purchases.
“I think it’s healthy. I hope in the not-too-distance-future we can begin discussing this,” Kaplan said.
Read: A jobs report whodunit: What caused the weakness in April
The Fed has been buying $120 billion a month of assets, along with keeping interest rates close to 0%, to support the economy.
The Fed has said it wants to see “substantial further progress” before scaling back asset purchases.
Asked about his outlook for policy, Evans said the Fed wants to see “outcome-based monetary policy.” San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly also wants to apply patience in peeling back bond buyinig, she told Yahoo Finance on Monday.
“When we’re close to our employment mandate and inflation is picking up, we’ll be talking about that,” Evans said.
“It is going to take quite some time for us to actually see it in the data. I can’t give you a time frame,” the Chicago Fed President said.
Evans is expected to speak again later Monday at a conference at 2 p.m. ET hosted by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.
Meanwhile, Daly said she remained “bullish about the future,” of the jobs market and referred to “volatility” in the data as normal.
“We’re going to have fits and starts,” Daly said.
Stocks traded mixed Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.10%
trading in record territory, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
-1.04%
and the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
-2.55%
trading lower.
