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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, speaking the day before a key employment report, said on Thursday the U.S. economy needs to add fewer than 100,000 jobs a month to cover new entrants to the workforce, setting an implicit floor for the jobs growth policymakers want to see.
"To simply provide jobs for those who are newly entering the labor force probably requires under 100,000 jobs per month," with anything above that helping "absorb" those who are unemployed, discouraged or had dropped out of the labor market, Yellen, who was speaking before Congress' Joint Economic Committee, said in a question and answer session.
The November jobs report is scheduled for release at 0830 EST (1330 GMT) Friday, providing a last key bit of economic data for the Fed before a policy meeting on Dec 15-16 that may see the first U.S. interest rate increase in a decade.
Yellen, in a question on a separate issue, said the United States may be "close to the point at which we should be raising" a benchmark interest rate that has been held near zero since the onset of the financial crisis seven years ago. Though the pivotal policy meeting is less than two weeks away, she said that will still hinge on whether incoming information supports the Fed's outlook.
Job creation has been averaging around 200,000 a month this year, a figure Yellen said was "quite a bit" above the number needed to continue absorbing slack in the labor market.
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