Federal Reserve officials have acknowledged that the battle against inflation will be paid for with lost jobs, and the U.S. central bank will need an unlikely combination of events to keep those losses to a minimum as interest rates continue to rise. Economists assessing the trade-off facing the Fed estimate U.S. employment could drop by anywhere from a few hundred thousand positions to as many as several million before the Fed fixes the worst outbreak of inflation in 40 years. The final tally will depend on how closely the economy follows patterns seen in recent decades, to what extent things like improved global supply chains help lower inflation, and how strict the Fed is in enforcing its 2% inflation goal. With the central bank’s preferred inflation measure currently increasing at a more than a 6% annual rate, Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, a U.S.-based consulting firm, estimates it would take 5.3 million lost jobs and an unemployment rate of 6.7%, substantially above the 3.7% seen in August, to lower inflation to 2%. “Can the Fed achieve a pure soft landing? … Probably not,” Brusuelas said, referring to a scenario in which monetary tightening slows the economy, and inflation, without triggering a recession. “It is difficult to envision a benign outcome.” Data on August jobs, released Friday showed the U.S. firms added 315,000 jobs in August, a slowing from the blow-out half-million jobs added in July and a sign that some of the economy’s post-pandemic excesses may be moderating without giving way altogether. In addition, the number of people in the labor force surged by nearly 800,000 to a new record high – a dynamic Fed officials have been banking on to ease wage pressures over time. Because many of those new entrants had yet to find a job, the unemployment rate rose to 3.7% from 3.5%, an increase Fed and other officials are likely to see as constructive since it indicates a greater supply of people willing to take jobs if offered. “I don’t mind seeing an uptick in unemployment if we are getting more people into the work force. That is good for companies,” said U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. “We still hear the concerns” from firms about difficulties hiring workers, “but not as loud,” he said. Fed officials hope the burden of fighting inflation falls less on employment than other parts of the economy, even as for months they’ve bemoaned the labor market’s current state as unsustainable. Updated projections are due to be released at the end of the Fed’s policy meeting on September 20-21. If, as expected, those projections show higher unemployment, the chances for a soft landing will confront an unpleasant historical fact: Once the U.S. unemployment rate increases beyond a certain amount, it tends to keep rising. Since at least the late 1940s, even modest increases of half a percentage point in the unemployment rate from a year earlier – the magnitude of increase Fed officials have begun to hint at – have tended to spiral to jumps of 2 percentage points or more. At the current labor force level of 164.7 million, that would translate into around 3.3 million fewer people employed – below some estimates but still high. “Usually, once the labor market gets going downhill, it picks up speed and it goes” further downhill, said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist and founder of Sahm Consulting. “We’ve communicated over and over and over again our commitment to achieve that 2% goal,” New York Fed President John Williams told the Wall Street Journal this week. “I think it’ll take a few years, but there’s no confusion … We’re absolutely committed to doing it.” NN: Its going to take at least 1 6% unemployment rate and 6 to 7% FED FUNDS rate to put out this inflation fire storm…….