William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said a slow down in the pace of employment growth highlights the need to continue the pace of the Federal Reserve‘s current asset purchases. 

“After an encouraging pickup in the pace of job creation around the turn of the year, the employment report for March showed a gain of only 88,000 jobs,” Dudley said.

He added, “While I don’t want to read too much into a single month’s data, this underscores the need to wait and see how the economy develops before declaring victory prematurely.”

The employment slowdown along with the large amount of fiscal uncertainties hitting the economy are warning indicators that the Fed is not ready to taper its monthly mortgage-backed securities and Treasury purchases. 

“We have seen only a moderate improvement in labor market conditions over the past six months or so,” Dudley explained.