If incoming information broadly supports the Committee's expectation of ongoing improvement in labor market conditions, and inflation moving back towards its longer-run objective, the Committee will likely reduce the pace of asset purchases in further measured steps at future meetings.
That said, purchases are not on a preset course and the Committee's decisions about their pace will remain contingent on its outlook for the labor market and inflation, as well as its assessment of the likely efficacy and costs of such purchases.
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We began these asset purchases as a secondary tool, a supplementary tool to our forward guidance, to add some momentum to the recovery, and we said we would continue those purchases until we'd seen a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market, and the context of price stability.
As I noted, there have been a substantial number of jobs created and unemployment has come down, and in December the committee judged that enough progress had been made in the labor market to begin a measured pace of reductions in the pace of our asset purchases.
We purposely decided to act in a measured and deliberate way to take measured steps so that we could watch to see what was happening in the economy, and we've indicated that if the outlook continues to be one in which we expect, and are seeing continued improvement in the labor market, that implies growth strong enough going forward to anticipate such improvement, and inflation, which is running below our objective, if we see evidence that, that will come back toward our objective over time, we're likely to continue reducing the pace of our purchases in measured steps.
But, we've also indicated that the -- this program is not on a preset course, which means that if the committee judges there to be a change in the outlook, that it would reconsider -- it would reconsider what is appropriate with respect to the program.