(Reuters) – Recent stronger-than-expected data on the U.S. economy may be partly due to the difficulty of making accurate seasonal adjustments around the beginning of a new year, Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said on Thursday.
“The data has been remarkable across the board,” Barkin said in an interview with Bloomberg TV, citing strong economic growth and job gains. “But I am always cautious about numbers around the turn of the year, there’s big seasonal adjustments…I am not sure I am going to take too much out of any one month.”
Barkin also repeated the Fed could be patient in parsing more inflation data before making any change to its benchmark policy rate.
(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by)
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