Evans Says Progress on Fed’s Goals Will Take ‘Quite Some Time’

(Bloomberg) -- It will probably take “quite some time” for Federal Reserve officials to conclude the economy has made substantial progress following Friday’s disappointing jobs report, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said.

“I think we are going to have to see more strong employment numbers, and we’re going to have to see inflation,” Evans said Monday in a television interview on CNBC.

“And it will be delicate. We’ll see transitory inflation that’s going to look like it’s -- it is above 2%. Is it going to be relative prices, or is it something more sustainable?” Evans said. “So, I think it’s going to take quite some time for us to actually see it in the data, assess it.”

The U.S. central bank is currently buying $120 billion of bonds each month and has said it will continue to do so at that pace until “substantial further progress” has been made toward its employment and inflation objectives. A Labor Department report published Friday showed just 266,000 Americans were added to nonfarm payrolls in April, well below the increase of one million that had been predicted by the median forecaster in a Bloomberg survey.

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