The significant rise in unemployment that occurred in Australia from the early 1970s to the early 1990s was not due to a prolonged period of weak economic growth, it was due to the fact that we had three relatively short periods of recession, each of which resulted in a big lift in the unemployment rate.
However, we must also take into account the well-documented lags in the effects of monetary policy.8 Were the FOMC to delay the start of policy normalization for too long, we would likely end up having to tighten policy relatively abruptly to keep the economy from significantly overshooting both of our goals.