Our decision in December was based on the substantial improvement in the labor market and the Committee’s confidence that inflation would return to our 2 percent goal over the medium term.
Employment growth last year averaged a solid 230,000 per month, and the unemployment rate declined from 5.6 percent to 5.0 percent over the course of 2015 – and declined further to 4.9 percent last month. This is close to the unemployment rate generally regarded as the full employment rate of unemployment.