top federal reserve officials shared public remarks on wednesday on the heels of president joe bidens second state of the union address and a press conference by fed chair jerome powell neel kashkari president of the minneapolis federal reserve went on cnbc live to comment on the surprisingly high job growth in january the latest jobs report shows a massive addition of 517000 jobs nearly tripling economist estimates in his state of the union speech biden called out the 34 unemployment rate as the lowest in over five decades to a standing ovation from the congress yet for fed officials a strong job market is a signal that more tightening is needed kashkari said he too was surprised by the number in his view such a sign means that fed tightening to date has not had much on an imprint on the labor market theres some evidence that its having some effect but its pretty muted so far kashkari said “its very unlikely to see very strong job growth while wage growth is moderating and the fed needs to see wage growth at around 3 to be consistent with its 2 inflation target he said that served as an indicator the federal funds rate needed to continue to go up and kashkari was set on a landing rate of 54 in line with his own projections from december the fed confirmed a new hike on the federal funds rate of 025 earlier this month which placed the current rate at between 45 and 475 with several economists anticipating that the end of the hike cycle is near within the federal open market committee fomc which decides what the federal funds rate should be kashkari sits on the side of the table that believed harder fed tightening was necessary to bring inflation back down to 2 i wish we saw more evidence that underlying inflation is trending the way we wanted it he said but if you strip it all apart the services side of the economy is still very robust and wages are still growing at a rate thats in excess of being consistent with our 2 inflation target kashkari said on monday federal reserve bank of atlanta president raphael bostic expressed the same view in an interview with bloomberg bostic said sustained growth on the labor market like that of januarys would call for more hawkish monetary tightening he added however that the strong jobs data placed the us economy closer to a soft landing scenario at a wall street journal event on wednesday new york federal reserve president john williams said taking the federal funds rate to between 5 and 525 seemed very reasonable though he didnt take a jobs angle to support that remark speaking at a separate event federal reserve governor lisa cook said moving in smaller steps would be the appropriate measure as the fed assesses the effects of cumulative tightening in the economy and inflation reuters reported the fed had been dialing down on rate hikes with the last one being 025 and the previous one 05 following four 075 hikes between june and november 2022 cook said she thinks inflation can be brought down to 2 without a large increase in unemployment and echoed the sentiment that a strong job market could lead to a soft landing scenario