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| - The US economy is a long way from a strong job market and the experience of past recessions shows it could take years to recover, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday. In addition to mass vaccinations to halt the Covid-19 health crisis, it will take a full suite of government policies to repair the damage done by the pandemic to the US labor market, he said in a speech. "Despite the surprising speed of recovery early on, we are still very far from a strong labor market whose benefits are broadly shared," Powell told the Economic Club of New York. He again noted the true jobless rate is about 10 percent, far above the official 6.3 percent rate in January, after adding in people who have given up looking for a job and workers who were laid off but misclassified as employed. The damage is not equally shared and has eroded gains from the decade-long recovery that preceded the pandemic and finally extended to minorities, especially African Americans, he said. That experience showed "it can take many years to reverse the damage" to the workforce. And while the central bank has said explicitly it will not raise interest rates as unemployment begins to fall, Powell said responding to the crisis will require more than the Fed alone. Repairing the damage "will require a society-wide commitment, with contributions from across government and the private sector," he said. But Powell cautioned, "Experience tells us that getting to and staying at full employment will not be easy" and workers and households "are likely to need continued support." hs/cs
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