Federal Reserve set to shrink interest rate hikes

New York: Federal Reserve officials are set to shift down the pace of interest-rate hikes again in the coming week amid signs of slowing inflation, while Friday's jobs report may show steady demand for workers that improves the chances of a soft landing for the the world's largest economy.

Policy makers are poised to raise their benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday, to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, dialing back the size of the increase for a second-straight meeting. The move would follow a slew of recent data suggesting the Fed's aggressive campaign to slow inflation is working.

"I expect that we will raise rates a few more times this year, though, to my mind, the days of us raising them 75 basis points at a time have surely passed," Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said in a Jan. 20 speech. "Hikes of 25 basis points will be appropriate going forward."


Key questions for Fed Chair Jerome Powell at his post-meeting press conference will be how much higher the central bank intends to raise rates, and what officials need to see before pausing.

Fed officials have made clear they also want to see evidence that supply and demand imbalances in the labor market are starting to improve.

Hiring probably slowed in January, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg, who projected employers added 185,000 jobs compared with 223,000 in December. They see the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.6%, still near a five-decade low, and expect average hourly earnings rose 4.3% from a year earlier, a slowdown from the prior month, according to their median estimate.