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Washington (dpa) - The economic recovery from the Corona crisis is the momentum.
The US Federal Reserve (Fed) explained this in view of the relatively high unemployment rate and the ongoing economic consequences of the pandemic.
"The pace of recovery in the economy and the labor market has slowed in the past few months," said the central bank on Wednesday.
It is particularly difficult for industries that are directly affected by the effects, such as the hospitality industry.
The central bank of the world's largest economy emphasized that the further development of the economy would depend “on the course of the virus, including progress with vaccinations”.
With this, the central bank mentioned the ongoing corona vaccination campaign in a prominent way for the first time.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said of the highly effective vaccines: "Adequately widespread vaccinations would enable us to leave the pandemic behind us and return to more normal economic activity."
The economic outlook for the second half of the year is therefore better, he said.
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Powell admitted, however, that it would take a long time to vaccinate enough Americans to achieve what is known as herd immunity.
He was nevertheless optimistic: "There is nothing more important for the economy now than that people are vaccinated."
So far, around 20 million of the 330 million people in the country have been vaccinated.
As expected, the Fed therefore stuck to its historically loose monetary policy.
The key interest rate will remain at the ultra-low level of 0.0 to 0.25 percent.
This is still appropriate in view of the situation on the labor market and the low inflation, it said.
Securities purchases of around 120 billion US dollars a month to support the economy will also continue.
Monetary policy will continue to provide "powerful support" until the economy has recovered, Powell promised.
The economy has proven to be adaptable and resilient, thanks in part to the large stimulus packages, said Powell.
But the situation on the labor market has recently deteriorated again, he warned.
The further development is highly uncertain ».
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Just a week after the new US President Joe Biden was sworn in, the Fed meeting hadn't expected big decisions.
The independent central bank has already loosened its monetary policy unprecedentedly because of the Corona crisis.
Congress last approved an aid package worth around 900 billion US dollars at the end of December.
The Democrat Biden is already promoting a further stimulus package worth around 1.9 trillion dollars to stimulate the economy and the labor market again and contain the pandemic.
But Biden is dependent on the approval of the two chambers of parliament in the US Congress.
Before the pandemic came to a head last March, the US economy was booming.
At 3.5 percent, the unemployment rate was lower than it had been in decades; in December it was 6.7 percent.
Most recently, around 16 million people received some form of unemployment benefit.
As early as Thursday, the government wanted to announce the first estimate of growth in economic output in the fourth quarter and for the entire calendar year.
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No country in the world is as badly affected by the pandemic in absolute terms as the USA.
So far, authorities have reported around 25.5 million confirmed infections and nearly 430,000 deaths.
Recently, however, the number of new infections has decreased somewhat and averaged around 165,000 per day.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210127-99-197827 / 2