Central bank affirms commitment to provide more support amid uneven recovery

Federal Reserve officials projected no plans to raise interest rates through 2023 and said they were committed to providing more support to an economy that faces an uneven recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

In new projections released Wednesday, all 17 officials said they expect to keep rates near zero at least through next year, and 13 projected rates would stay there through 2023.

The Fed revised its post-meeting statement to deliver more specifics about the conditions that would warrant keeping interest rates near zero. Two officials dissented from the new statement.

The Fed said it would maintain rates near zero “until labor market conditions have reached levels consistent with the committee’s assessments of maximum employment and inflation has risen to 2% and is on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time.”

The Fed’s two-day policy meeting that concluded Wednesday is the first since officials last month announced a new framework that abandoned the central bank’s longtime strategy of pre-emptively lifting interest rates to head off higher inflation.