Janet Yellen Employment Quotations

The Federal Reserve's objectives of maximum employment and price stability do not, by themselves, ensure a strong pace of economic growth or an improvement in living standards. The most important factor determining living standards is productivity growth, defined as increases in how much can be produced in an hour of work.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is committed to policies that promote maximum employment and price stability, consistent with our mandate from Congress.

Firms don't just try to pay as little as possible to get the needed bodies on board; when there is unemployment, they ask themselves how wage cuts would affect the behavior of the employees. Would they quit or feel dissatisfied and work less hard on the firm's behalf if they feel that wage policies are unfair?

Are deviations from full employment a social problem? Obviously.

I'm just opposed to a pure inflation-only mandate in which the only thing a central bank cares about is inflation and not employment.

Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the absence of routine intervention? Certainly not,

Long-term unemployment can make any worker progressively less employable, even after the economy strengthens.

In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.