As widely expected yesterday Powell and the committee left rates near zero and made no change to asset purchases. There was little in the way of language changes in the post-meeting statement from the FOMC, however they did acknowledge that the economy continues to struggle. ‘Economic activity and employment have continued to recover but remain well below their levels at the beginning of the year’ the statement said.
In his post-meeting press conference Powell said he thinks the Fed still has plenty it can do to help the recovery. ‘Is monetary policy out of power or out of ammunition? The answer to that is no, I don’t think that’ Powell stated, adding ‘I think that we’re strongly committed to using these powerful tools that we have to support the economy during this difficult time for as long as needed and no one should have any doubt about that’.
Today we also had October's Nonfarm Payroll numbers. The market estimates were for 593k jobs added, an unemployment rate of 7.6% and participation rate of 61.5% before the figures.
The actual number of jobs added was 638k with the previous month’s figure revised up slightly. The unemployment rate also fell to 6.9% versus the prior month’s reading of 7.9% and the participation rate rose from last month's 61.4%, to 61.7%.