The decision
The Federal Open Market Committee voted on April 29 to hold the federal funds rate target range at 3.5 to 3.75 percent, where it has sat since a series of 2025 cuts. The postmeeting statement said job gains had remained low on average, the unemployment rate had been little changed, and inflation was elevated in part because of a recent increase in global energy prices tied to conflict in the Middle East. It described the outlook as facing a high level of uncertainty.
At his press conference, Chair Jerome Powell said the unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in March and had changed little in recent months, and that total personal-consumption-expenditures prices rose 3.5 percent over the 12 months ending in March, boosted by the rise in oil prices; core PCE inflation, excluding food and energy, was 3.2 percent, which he attributed largely to tariff effects on goods prices. Consumer spending was resilient and business fixed investment kept expanding at a brisk pace, Powell said, but "in contrast, activity in the housing sector has remained weak."
A record split
Four policymakers dissented from the decision and the statement, the most at a single FOMC meeting in roughly 34 years, according to Reuters and Bloomberg reporting on the vote breakdown. Governor Stephen Miran dissented because he wanted a quarter-point rate cut, continuing a pattern from earlier 2026 meetings. Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan dissented for a different reason: they objected to language in the statement they read as tilting toward future rate cuts — what Reuters described policymakers characterizing as an "easing bias" — arguing that elevated inflation did not yet justify signaling that direction.
The scale of the split reflects how divided the Committee had become over how to weigh a softening labor market against inflation still running above the 2 percent target. The minutes of the meeting noted that crude oil futures were higher than at the March meeting, that near-term inflation expectations in the Open Market Desk's survey of market participants had moved up again, and that market pricing implied little change to the funds rate for the rest of the year, with roughly a 30 percent probability then assigned to further easing.
Powell's last press conference as chair
This was Powell's final press conference as Fed chair. He used part of it to address the extended legal dispute over his tenure, telling reporters he welcomed an announcement the previous Friday that the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia had closed a criminal investigation tied to the controversy, while noting she said she would not hesitate to restart it. Powell said the Department of Justice had given assurances over the weekend that it would not reopen the matter absent a criminal referral from the Fed's Inspector General, and that he would not leave the Board of Governors "until this investigation is well and truly over, with transparency and finality." He also congratulated Kevin Warsh on advancing out of the Senate Banking Committee that morning, a step in the process to succeed him.
The April hold came five months before the Committee's next confirmed move: a rate increase at its September 2026 meeting, reflecting how the energy-driven inflation shock that dominated the April discussion continued to constrain the Fed's options even as the labor market and housing activity softened further over the summer.