Worried About the Labor Market Overheating? Relax.
The US added 303,000 nonfarm jobs in March, exceeding all estimates. Take it for what it is: very good news.
America is working.
Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images
In monetary policy, there’s a school of thought that you can have too much of a good thing. Too many jobs, too much wage growth, too much economic output — it’s all potentially inflationary, as the thinking goes. Or, at least it is in normal times. In today’s context, that line of thinking is probably wrong, and it’s good that at least one influential member of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee recognizes as much.
Here’s Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee speaking at an event Thursday in Oak Brook, Illinois (emphasis mine):