This approach to maximum employment has allowed the FOMC to navigate the current recovery in a way that has likely brought more people back into productive employment than might have been the case with a fixed, aggregate  2  See the Employment Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 79-304, § 2, 60 Stat. 23, 23 (1946).
The FOMC’s inflation target was adopted in January 2012 in the Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. It was amended in January 2017 to clarify that the target is symmetric around 2 percent; the most recent Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy (in which the quoted text appears in paragraph 3) is available on the Board’s website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomc_longerrungoals.pdf.