The US has no formal inflation target, and the law – which has not changed in this respect in the last 50 years – instructs the central bank to relate to growth and employment, too. Despite all this, throughout the 1980s the American central bank focused on getting the annual inflation rate down, to the 2-3 percent that has characterized the last eight years.
The unemployment rate ranged from 5 to 7 percent all those years, and still the central bank did not relent. The message was: employment is generated not by accepting inflation but by making structural changes and raising productivity.