The unemployment rate is 10 percent and the inflation rate is 2 percent
Consider the choice between (a) full employment with a 6 percent annual rate of inflation or (b) price stability with an 8 percent unemployment rate. Option (a) risks inflationary expectations that will give rise to creeping inflation, whereas option (b) might lower spending and push the economy toward deflation. Meantime, the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 63.4 percent. Unemployment Rate in the United States averaged 5.73 percent from 1948 until 2020, reaching an all time high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953. The FOMC implements monetary policy to help maintain an inflation rate of 2 percent over the medium term. The inflation rate is measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, an important price measure for consumer spending on goods and services.