FOMC Meeting Schedule

Economic projections are collected from each member of the Board of Governors and each Federal Reserve Bank president four times a year, in connection with the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) meetings in March, June, September, and December. All of the charts and tables that summarize those projections are released shortly after the conclusion of the meeting.

Each policymaker provides forecasts for economic growth, unemployment, and inflation conditioned on his or her individual assumption of appropriate monetary policy. More specifically, the numbers that they provide for each of the years in their forecast are: the percent change in gross domestic product adjusted for inflation (real GDP), the unemployment rate, the percent change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE inflation), and the percent change in the price index for PCE excluding food and energy (core PCE inflation). Changes in real GDP and prices are measured from the fourth quarter of one year to the fourth quarter of the next. The unemployment rate is the average civilian unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of a year.

Since January 2012, the economic projections have also included information about policymakers’ projections of appropriate monetary policy. Specifically, the projections include information about policymakers’ projections of the appropriate level of the target federal funds rate–that is, the path that each policymaker judges likely to be most consistent with the Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices—at the end of the current year and the next few calendar years, and over the longer run.

The term “monetary policy” refers to the actions undertaken by a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve, to influence the availability and cost of money and credit to help promote national economic goals. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 gave the Federal Reserve responsibility for setting monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve controls the three tools of monetary policy–open market operations, the discount rate, and reserve requirements. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is responsible for the discount rate and reserve requirements, and the Federal Open Market Committee is responsible for open market operations. Using the three tools, the Federal Reserve influences the demand for, and supply of, balances that depository institutions hold at Federal Reserve Banks and in this way alters the federal funds rate. The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend balances at the Federal Reserve to other depository institutions overnight.

Changes in the federal funds rate trigger a chain of events that affect other short-term interest rates, foreign exchange rates, long-term interest rates, the amount of money and credit, and, ultimately, a range of economic variables, including employment, output, and prices of goods and services.