(Reuters) – The U.S. economy is recovering faster than many policy makers had expected, but a “broad-based recovery is taking more time to achieve” and more progress will be needed in the job market before the Federal Reserve’s conditions for reducing its extensive support will be met, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland said on Wednesday.
The unemployment rate could fall to 4.5% or less this year and gross domestic product growth is likely to be in the “6 to 7 percent range,” Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said in prepared remarks to the Boston Economic Club.
“My positive baseline outlook depends on appropriate monetary policy, which, in my view, will need to be very accommodative for some time to support the broadening of the recovery,” she said.
(Reporting By Dan Burns; Editing by Chris Reese)
