Three-plus years of high inflation have weighed heavily on Americans, their finances and their outlooks on the economy.

And while that global inflation shock has certainly waned, and the rate of price hikes is close to normal, it hasn’t felt great to Americans, because those price levels aren’t going back down to where they were before.

So when will people start to feel relief?

“It takes some years of real wage gains for people to feel better,” Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday. “That’s what we’re trying to create. And I think we’re well on the road to creating that.”

Average hourly earnings gains have outpaced inflation for 17 months as of September, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Inflation has come down, the economy’s still strong and wages are moving up at a sustainable pace.

“But it will be some time before people regain their confidence and feel that,” he said.
“And we don’t tell people how to feel about the economy. We respect, completely respect what they’re feeling. Those feelings are true; they’re accurate. We don’t question them, we respect them.”

When asked if the Fed would consider undershooting on its 2% target to help people catch back up, Powell said that’s not in the cards.

“That’s not the way our framework works,” he said. “We do not think it would be appropriate to deliberately undershoot … low inflation can be a problem too.”