'Tapering' could still take a few months, Fed's Barkin says

A top US central bank official said that the Federal Reserve may need a few more months before it can reduce its monetary stimulus.

In remarks to Reuters, Federal Reserve bank of Richmond president, Thomas Barkin, said the country's job market might take a few more months to recover enough for the Fed to be able to pare back policy accommodation.

The central banker also said that he wanted to see the employment-to-population recover by perhaps another half a percentage point to approximately 59%.

Especially important was to see whether the expiry of unemployment insurance led to a "big" increase in the number of Americans rejoining the work force.

"On the employment side you have a hypothesis that you are going to bring a lot more back in.

"On inflation you have a hypothesis that these things are transitory. I need to test both of these."