The Fed Cares About Inflation 10 Times More Than It Cares About Unemployment


Ryan Avent, having exhausted his conventional analysis of the Fed’s 2008 transcripts, turns today to a more analytical approach: counting words. I think others have already made this point without numbers, but Avent’s most powerful finding is that the Fed cares way more about inflation than it does about unemployment:

There is only one winner in the dual mandate. The word “inflation” (or variants thereof, such as “inflationary”) was mentioned a cool 2,664 times in 2008; “unemployment” pops up just 275 times.

I’m assuming he played fair and also looked for variants of “unemployment,” like “employment” or “jobs.” In any case, I don’t think this comes as much of a surprise to anyone, since it’s been obvious for decades that the Fed not only doesn’t care about unemployment, but gets positively worried when too many people have jobs. That would mean the labor market is tight and workers might get paid more, you see, and that could be inflationary. Still, it’s nice to see this verified quantitatively.

Avent also found that there were fewer mentions of “recession” as the year went on, which seems odd but might not be. Early on, when it was still unclear if the economy was in recession, I suppose they argued about this a lot. By June, when there was no longer any question about it, they all took it for granted and no longer even needed to mention it.

As for the finding that laughter increased later in the year, I guess I can’t blame them. There’s only so much globe-destroying financial panic you can take without cracking a few jokes.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate