US durable goods orders up by 7.9% in April

In the week ending May 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 215,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's ...

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I’d like to discuss one of the most fundamental challenges we face as economic policymakers: understanding structural economic change as it happens. There are many types of structural change that create such a challenge, including changes in the famous star variables like the natural rates of unemployment and interest. But today, I’ll focus on shifts in the trend rate of productivity growth. I’ll boil this topic down to a simple two-part question: how does the economy respond to a shift in the rate of productivity growth, and what does it mean for monetary policy? It may seem like a basic question that should have been long settled by now. But the further you delve into trying to answer it, the more nuanced it becomes. This question is especially timely today because of all the attention on artificial intelligence and its potential to spur a productivity boom. But this is not our first productivity growth rodeo. Thankfully, history provides important lessons for us to learn from. Think back to the 1970s, when the United States experienced a pronounced productivity slowdown following a quarter century of remarkable postwar growth. This was followed by an acceleration beginning in the mid-1990s, which itself reversed in the mid-2000s. These episodes weren’t minor statistical curiosities—they fundamentally reshaped the macroeconomic landscape. The productivity slowdown of the 1970s contributed to stagflation. And the productivity boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s was a contributing factor to that decade’s economic prosperity with low in Fed's Williams does not comment on near-term monetary policy outlook.

Fed's Williams: Middle East War Impacts Consumer Spending Amid Higher Energy Costs - Hit To Inflation Likely To Peak In Next Few Months - Tariff Impact Should Peak In Next Few Months - Near Term, Inflation Around 4% And Core Inflation Around 3% Fed's Williams: Anchoring inflation expectations is critical. Fed's Williams: Monetary policy needs to be data dependent. WILLIAMS: FED MUST BE CLEAR IT IS GETTING INFLATION TO 2% WILLIAMS: PATH FOR MONETARY POLICY DEPENDS ON DATA, OUTLOOK AND RISKS