The Fed was divided going into this meetingpublished at 18:45 GMT
Danielle Kaye
New York business reporter
The Fed is responsible for helping to keep prices stable and unemployment low. It typically cuts interest rates when it thinks the job market needs a boost and raises them when it thinks prices are rising too quickly.
Right now, however, both things are happening. Policymakers disagree about the how the Fed should act in the face of these competing priorities.
The Fed is still operating without official labour market data for October and November, due to the month-long government shutdown. That gives it fewer key economic indicators to rely on while making its decision.
For now, fears of tariff-driven inflation have taken a backseat to concerns about a weakening labour market, but they have not disappeared.
This has all been weighing on the bank’s open market committee, which decides the direction of its interest rate.
“It’s difficult to recall a time when the Federal Open Market Committee has been so evenly divided about the need for additional rate cuts than the upcoming December meeting,” Michael Pearce, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a research note.
Even if the Fed does cut interest rates again today, he said he thought the chance of many additional cuts were low, since he expects the job market to stabilise and inflation to remain above the 2% rate the bank considers healthy.