Fed Chair Jerome Powell says 'no decision yet' on speeding interest rate hikes

Important economic data due to be released before Federal Reserve officials next meet

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. AP

A day after his comments sent stocks tumbling on Wall Street, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said banking officials had not yet decided on the size of an interest-rate increase this month.

“We have not made any decision about the March meeting,” Mr Powell told the US House of Representatives financial services committee on Wednesday.

But he did repeat that the Fed would be prepared to increase the pace of its interest rate rises if economic data continued to be strong.

“If — and I stress that no decision has been made on this — but if the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we’d be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes,” Mr Powell said.

Data from the Labour Department showed that job openings remained at an overly high level of 10.8 million on the last day of January, or 1.9 positions available for every jobseeker.

The Fed will also closely monitor the February unemployment report, which will be released on Friday.

“We have some potentially important data coming up,” Mr Powell said.

The Fed has raised interest rates eight times since March 2022 to the range of 4.50 and 4.75 per cent.

Traders anticipate policymakers will impose a 50-basis-point increase when they next meet on March 21-22.

Bloomberg contributed to this report