Reply #7: No, look at the summary, which also includes a chart [View All]

[ProSense]

Participants generally anticipated that the unemployment rate would rise somewhat further during the final months of 2009 and then decline steadily over the next few years. Their projections for the average unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2009 had a central tendency of 9.9 to 10.1 percent, somewhat higher than the actual unemployment rate of 9.8 percent in September--the latest reading available at the time of the November FOMC meeting. Participants noted that, as in the early stages of previous recoveries the unemployment rate was continuing to rise after output turned up, reflecting firms' uncertainty about the pace of recovery and their efforts to raise productivity and hold down costs. Looking further ahead, participants' unemployment rate projections had a central tendency of 9.3 to 9.7 percent for the fourth quarter of 2010, 8.2 to 8.6 percent for the end of 2011, and 6.8 to 7.5 percent for the final quarter of 2012. A number of participants made modest upward revisions to their estimates of the longer-run sustainable rate of unemployment in light of their assessments of the extent to which ongoing structural adjustments would be associated with somewhat higher labor market frictions. Thus, participants' longer-run unemployment rate projections had a central tendency of 5.0 to 5.2 percent, about a quarter percentage point higher than in June.

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This was as of November 4.