Fed survey finds lowest inflation expectations in years

Federal Reserve officials worried about sliding inflation expectations may take little comfort in readings from the New York Fed’s latest monthly survey of U.S. households, which fell to multiyear lows in August.

Expected inflation one year ahead dropped to 2.4% last month, marking the lowest level in the survey’s six-year history, according to the median survey response. Expected inflation three years ahead slipped to 2.5%, the lowest since May 2017, from 2.6% the month before.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues at the U.S. central bank are keeping a close eye on inflation expectations because they believe such views to be an important driver of actual price pressures. Fed officials cut interest rates in July for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, citing low inflation alongside slowing global growth and trade policy uncertainty as a factor in the decision. They are widely expected to deliver another rate cut when they conclude their Sept. 17-18 meeting.

Their preferred measure of consumer price inflation was 1.4% in July and has mostly undershot their 2% target throughout this economic expansion. Survey-based measures of inflation expectations have generally fallen in recent years as actual inflation has failed to pick up.

New York Fed President John Williams addressed the trend in a Sept. 4 speech. “Ongoing disinflationary pressures from abroad, and the risk that inflation expectations in the U.S. may have drifted down after many years of inflation running below 2%, form an important part of this picture,” Williams said.

New York Fed survey respondents also put the odds that the stock market would be higher a year from now at just 38% on average.