In particular, the unemployment rate still stood above our assessment of its longer-run normal level—that is, the unemployment rate that we expect to prevail when the economy is operating at maximum employment—and inflation remained below the 2 percent objective.
Because my colleagues and I expected that labor market conditions would continue to improve and that inflation would move back to 2 percent over the medium term, we anticipated that the time was approaching when the economy would be strong enough that we should start to scale back our support.