People who live and work in low- and middle-income communities tell us that this job market is the best anyone can recall. We increasingly hear reports that employers are training workers who lack required skills, adapting jobs to the needs of employees with family responsibilities, and offering second chances to people who need one.
Inflation has been surprisingly stable during the expansion: not falling much when the economy was weak and not rising much as the expansion gained strength. Inflation ran close to our symmetric 2 percent objective for most of last year but has been running somewhat below 2 percent this year.