Shadowing central bankers and economists at the annual Federal Reserve conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., a group of about 10 demonstrators pressed Fed Chair Janet Yellen not to yield to pressure to raise interest rates.
Carrying placards and green T-shirts embossed with the slogan “What recovery?” they said they’d come from New York, Missouri, Minnesota and elsewhere to draw attention to people left behind by the recovery and still unable to find work.
One demonstrator approached Yellen to press his point as she prepared to enter the opening reception Thursday night. With security guards hovering nearby, the two shook hands and spoke for about a minute before Yellen entered the closed-door gathering.
Yellen spokesman Doug Tillett said her staff would seek to arrange a meeting between the chair and the demonstrators back in Washington.
Their message was generally in sync with Yellen’s stance since she became Fed chair in February to keep rates low to help support a still-subpar economy.
In a speech to the conference Friday, Yellen said that the Great Recession complicated the Fed’s ability to assess the US job market and made it harder to determine when to adjust interest rates.
Yellen’s remarks to an annual Fed conference offered no signal that she’s altered her view that the economy still needs Fed support from ultra-low interest rates. The timing of a Fed rate increase remains unclear, though many economists foresee an increase by mid-2015.
The Fed chair noted that while the unemployment rate has steadily declined, other gauges of the job market have been harder to evaluate and may reflect continued weakness. These include high levels of people who have been unemployed for more than six months, many people working part time who would like full-time jobs, and weak pay growth.
Yellen repeated language the Fed has used at its last meeting that record-low short-term rates will likely remain appropriate for a “considerable time” after the Fed stops buying bonds to keep long-term rates down. The Fed’s bond buying is set to end this fall.
“We’re not in recovery,” said demonstrator Cee Cee Butler, a 34-year-old mother of two from Washington, D.C. “It may be fine on Wall Street, but on my streets, it’s not fine at all.”
Butler said she works a minimum wage job at McDonald’s and receives food stamps but still can’t make ends meet. She said the trip to Wyoming was paid for by donations from advocacy groups.