Here are highlights from the press conference with Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen.

On what it will take for the Fed to move. “Obviously we have to look at the pace of job creation, we have to look at what’s happening to labor force participation to part time employment for economic reasons, to job openings, to the pace of quits, to wage inflation and other indicators of the state of the labor market. I did say when we agreed that labor markets slack has diminished to some extent, in the inter-meeting period and clearly over a longer span of time over the last several years, obviously we have made considerable progress in moving towards our goal of maximum employment. So in spite of the fact that there is some progress on that front the committee wants to see some further progress before feeling that it will be appropriate to raise rates.”

On whether it should listen to the IMF’s call to wait until 2016 to lift rates: “I want to emphasize, and I think the IMF would agree with this, that the importance of the timing of a first decision to raise rates is something that should not be overblown whether it is September or December or March, what matters is the entire path of rates, and as I have said the committee anticipates economic conditions that would call for a gradual evolution of the Fed funds rate towards normalization. With respect to international spillovers, this is something that we have been long attentive to. We have to put in place a policy that is appropriate to evolving conditions in the U.S. economy but we can’t promise that there will not be volatility when we make a decision to raise rates.”

On how the market may react to hikes: “We can only do what is in our power to attempt to minimize needless volatility that could have repercussions for other countries or financial stability more generally and that is to attempt to communicate as clearly as we can about our policy decisions, what they will depend on and what we are looking at. We will be responding to incoming data. We have tried to make that clear. And I think it is clear that the market is also responding to incoming data and you can see that in daily market reactions to surprises in the economic data.”

On worker pay: “Wage increases are still running at a low level but there have been some tentative signs that wage growth is picking up. We have seen an increase in the growth rate of the employment cost index and a mild uptick in the growth of average hourly earnings. I would call these tentative signs of stronger wage growth.”

On the audit-the-Fed bill: “We place high priority on being an accountable and transparent central bank and I think that if you compare the transparency of monetary policy decisions in the Federal Reserve with other central banks we are one of the most transparent central banks in terms of the information that we provide to the public in a whole variety of ways. To my mind the Fed is accountable and we work well as an institution. I’m not certain what the problem is that needs to be addressed.”