Brexit vote, jobs data, justify patience, Fed´s Lockhart says

Last Friday´s weak jobs report and the upcoming Brexit referendum justified “patience” when deciding on another interest rate hike, a US central bank oficial said.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, the president of the Federal Reserve bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, said he would wait to observe how the data came in over the next few weeks.

However, he emphasised that was only his own view and that the 15 June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee would still be ‘live’.

Likewise, he emphasised that the economy continued to be on track to grow by around 2%.

“I am not really changing my overall view of the economy because of the jobs report.”

In Lockhart´s opinion, the most likely reason for the slowdown in hiring seen in May was the natural slowing in job generation as the economy got closer to full employment.

Another possibility was the natural waxing and waning in the economic data, which was never going to be linear, he said.

Lockhart was not a member of the FOMC in 2016.