Jerome Powell struck a surprisingly upbeat tone on Wednesday, calling the U.S. economy “amazing to see” after years of shocks.
But as he spoke during his penultimate press conference, the Federal Reserve chair repeatedly returned to a more unsettling theme: no one—not even the Fed—knows what comes next.
He took advantage of reporters’ questions to take a wide view on the economy over the last six years, calling the economy’s resilience through years of overlapping crises “amazing to see”—even as he noted the Fed is still navigating one of its trickiest moments in decades.
Powell spent much of the press conference cataloging the problems the Fed can’t solve and the questions it can’t answer. Fortune calculated that he said the phrase “don’t know” 17 times during the conference.
An economy that keeps defying expectations
“The US economy has really been just doing pretty well through a lot of significant challenges over the past few years,” Powell said following the Fed’s decision to hold interest rates steady for the second straight meeting. “It’s been amazing to see.”
The remark came in response to a question about whether the economy could hold up despite a possible energy shock from the war in Iran. Powell pointed to 2023, when the Fed was aggressively raising rates and “close to 100% of economists called for a recession.” It never came. “In fact, 2023 was a really strong year,” he said.
During his time as chair, Powell has faced a global pandemic that rippled through supply chains for years, a startling war in Ukraine that caused an energy shock, a battery of tariffs, and now this war in Iran, which the IEA has warned threatens to cause the worst energy crisis in history. Still, to Powell’s point, the economy throughout his tenure never truly dipped into a recession, stagflation, or depression, as many had forecast at some point or another during the conflicts.
‘We just don’t know’: Powell leans into uncertainty
Throughout the crises, Powell insulated himself—and infuriated many others—by never quite committing to a base case of how it would play out. He famously held out on declaring whether inflation from tariffs would be a “one-time” pass-through or something more sticky. During the aggressive rate-hike cycle, he refused to signal when the Fed would let up, earning him the nickname “Too Late Powell” from President Donald Trump.
Inflation is still running a full percentage point above the Fed’s 2% target, with core PCE at 3%. Powell attributed between half and three-quarters of a percentage point of that overshoot to tariffs, which he said are taking longer to work their way through the economy than the Fed initially expected. On the morning of the decision, wholesale prices came in hotter than expected, compounding market fears that inflation might be worse than anticipated.
The labor market, meanwhile, has stalled. Adjusted for earlier overcounts, private-sector hiring has effectively flatlined. Once you adjust for overcounting in previous months, private-sector job creation has effectively flatlined. The February jobs report showed employers cutting 92,000 positions, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%. Powell said the break-even rate for new jobs is essentially zero, given that labor force growth has all but stopped due to immigration restrictions during the Trump administration.
“That’s balance,” Powell said, “but it does have a feel of downside risk, and it’s not kind of a really comfortable balance.”
An oil shock is adding new risks
Then there’s that war. Oil prices have surged since the Iran conflict began, with Brent crude nearing $115 a barrel and gas prices jumping almost $1 per gallon—raising fresh fears of another inflation spike. Powell acknowledged the oil shock would create “upward pressure on inflation” and “downward pressure on spending and employment”—but said the Fed has no way of knowing how large or lasting those effects will be.
“Nobody knows,” he said. “They could be much smaller or much bigger. We just don’t know.”
Powell rejected the idea that the U.S. is in stagflation—at least for now—and insisted the economy is holding together.
But his broader message was harder to ignore: the Fed is running out of easy options, the risks are rising, and even the world’s most powerful central bank is navigating without a clear map.
