YESTERDAY the Federal Reserve released transcripts of its monetary-policy meetings in 2009 (as always, there is a five-year lag). So we thought it would be a good opportunity to look at how the Fed's thinking has changed over time. Taking data from 1978, when the first transcripts of meetings and conference calls were released, to 2009, we analysed over 40m words to see what the big cheeses at the Fed were talking about. Big data indeed. Since 1977 the Fed has operated under a "dual mandate" from Congress to "promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates". That sounds like three things, but in layman's terms it boils down to two: first, inflation that is under control; second, low unemployment. But as the graph below shows, over time that mandate has looked increasingly one-track.

The lines show the number of times, per year, that words related to employment, inflation and crisis are mentioned in the meetings. So, if someone mentions "price stability" in a meeting, that gets counted as a mention of "inflation". If someone blurts out "spare capacity", that goes in the "employment" bin. And so on.*

Over time, but especially in the 2000s, members of the Fed started using inflation-related words relatively more frequently. In 1978, every time someone mentioned a word related to unemployment, someone else would mention 1.6 words related to inflation. By 2008, the ratio was more than four-to-one. This may not be especially surprising to people who remember central bankers' obsession with inflation-targeting from the late 1990s; the extent of the shift is more so.

The question is whether the Fed's shifting priorities are a good thing. With America's unemployment rate still a percentage point higher than it was just before the recession hit, perhaps the Fed should think a little bit more about joblessness?

* The full list of words: "Crisis" words: "crisis"; "recession". "Inflation" words: "inflation"; "price stability"; "prices"; "deflation". "Employment" words: "unemployment"; "employment"; "slack"; "joblessness"; "labor market".