Latest / The Federal Reserve Podcast with Fexingo: Interest Rates, FOMC Meetings, and Monetary Policy
How Falling Labor Force Participation Forces the Fed's Hand
In Episode 96 of The Federal Reserve Podcast, Lucas and Luna dig into a single startling data point: the U.S. labor force participation rate has fallen to its lowest level in 50 years outside of the pandemic. They discuss what's driving people out of the workforce—from long COVID to early retirement to the discouraged-worker effect—and why this matters more to the Fed than the headline payrolls miss of 57,000. Lucas walks through how Chair Powell's framework has shifted: the Fed can no longer assume the labor market will tighten on its own. Instead, a shrinking pool of workers could…
The skinny
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