And as is indicated in the Summary of Economic Projections, Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants have, over the past seven years, repeatedly revised down their estimates of both u* and r* as unemployment fell and as real interest rates remained well below previous estimates of neutral without the rise in inflation those earlier estimates would have predicted.
I would argue that these revisions to u* and r* indicate that the FOMC has been data dependent in this second sense and that these updated assessments of u* and r* have had an important influence on the path for the policy rate actually implemented in recent years.