Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell explains the decision to leave the policy rate, federal funds rate, unchanged at the range of 5.25-5.5% and responds to questions in the post-meeting press conference.

Key quotes

"I do think policy is restrictive and is weighing on demand."

"You can see that with the labor market."

"Saw evidence of that today in the JOLTS report."

"Quits and hiring rates have normalized."

"We believe over time policy is sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation back down to 2%."

"The data will show if that's so."

"Unlikely that next policy rate move would be a hike."

"Policy focus is on how long to keep policy restrictive."

"To hike, we'd need to see evidence policy is not sufficiently restrictive -- that's not what we see