LONDON – The U.S. Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates from September 2022, economists at the country’s biggest bank said in a 2022 outlook note.
JPMorgan expects the central bank to raise rates by 0.25% from the third quarter of next year and keep raising them by 25 basis points every quarter “at least until real rates are at zero,” the team led by chief economist Mike Feroli wrote.
Ten-year inflation-adjusted yields or “real yields” stood at minus 1.12% on Thursday.
The bank’s forecast for the first Fed rate hike is a little more conservative than at some rivals, such as Deutsche Bank, which expects the first U.S. hike as early as July 2022. Money markets expect the first increase at a similar time.
JPMorgan’s economists expect U.S. economic growth to average 3.5% in 2022, compared to 5.5% in 2021, and full employment to be achieved by mid-2022.
Inflation is also expected to slow in the coming quarters, with core prices projected to average 2.2% by the third quarter of 2022 compared to 4.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
“Supply bottlenecks in the goods sector appear to be easing, and we expect that to continue in 2022,” the economists wrote.
