If you look at the Federal Reserve’s forecasts, the U.S. economy is right at full employment.

The Fed’s projection for where unemployment should be in the “longer run” is between 4.7% and 5%. In May, the unemployment rate was 4.7%.

If that’s the case, then if the jobless rate falls below that level, then inflation should start to bubble up.

Yet there was no indication — in the Fed’s policy statement or in the ensuing press conference from Chairwoman Janet Yellen — that the central bank is in any hurry to lift interest rates, even from the current, minuscule level between 25 and 50 basis points.

Also read:Go-slower approach prevails as Fed leaves interest rates unchanged

Yellen said it was “not impossible” that the Fed would lift interest rates in July, which sounds like a pretty high bar.

There also are six members, rather than one, that now think the central bank will lift interest rates just one time this year, according to the Fed’s dot plot of rate forecasts.

The Fed’s view seems to be that subpar jobs growth the last two months — a grand total of 161,000 new jobs, which is worse than any single month from October to March — reflects a slowing pace of growth.

Other economic reports, it should be said, aren’t so gloomy. Retail sales had a solid pickup in May. Inflation seems to be gradually heading higher, depending which gauge is examined. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow is forecasting 2.8% growth in the second quarter.

The other explanation for slowing jobs growth is that it’s hard for companies to find the right people. Or put in the terms of economics, it’s a supply problem and not a demand one. That’s certainly what is suggested when looking at the job-openings data, which simultaneously shows record number of openings and a not particularly aggressive rate of hiring.

To be fair, the market is even more dovish than the Fed. Even after the Fed cut its views on the path of interest rates, the central bank is way more hawkish on where interest rates will end up — it says 3% — than the barely 1% the market is expecting when looking at futures contracts.

But there’s seems to be at least a snowball’s chance that both the market and the Fed are wrong. If the problem with the jobs market is the pool of labor rather than the need for it, then wages will accelerate— no bad thing! — and the central bank will have to gradually tighten.

Put a different way, if the Fed believed in its own forecasts, then rate hikes will come sooner and more frequently than the central bank has suggested.