Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic said Friday that December’s jobs report, with its slowdown in wage increases and better-than-expected employment growth, doesn’t change his view on monetary policy.The central bank official said he still sees interest rates rising, up past 5% for the Fed’s benchmark funds rate, where he sees it staying for a prolonged period.”It doesn’t really change my outlook at all,” Bostic told CNBC’s Steve Liesman during a live interview at a conference in New Orleans. “I’ve been looking for the economy to continually slow from the strong position it was at in the summertime. This is just the next step in that.”Nonfarm payrolls added 223,000 positions last month, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the Labor Department reported. That was slightly better than respective estimates for 200,000 and 3.7%.Perhaps more importantly, average hourly earnings rose just 0.3% for the month and 4.6% from a year ago, both below expectations and an indicator that the inflation spiral gripping the economy for the past year and a half may be easing.Still, Bostic said he expects another rate increase of either a quarter- or half-percen …
