FOMC meeting calendar

What happens at an FOMC meeting

The Committee meets over one or two days. Staff present their assessment of the economy and financial conditions, participants give their own readings, and the twelve voting members then vote on a directive to the New York Fed's trading desk — in practice, on where to set the target range for the federal funds rate.

The decision is announced in a written statement released at the close of the final day. The statement is short, and the changes between one statement and the next are read closely, because they are deliberate. A press conference follows the announcement, and the full minutes are published three weeks later.

Who votes

Nineteen people sit on the Committee, but only twelve vote. The seven members of the Board of Governors vote permanently, as does the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The remaining four votes rotate each year among the other eleven Reserve Bank presidents. The presidents who are not voting that year still attend and still take part in the discussion.

The Board's current membership is on the Fed primer, alongside a map of the twelve districts.

The four projection meetings

Four times a year — March, June, September and December — the Committee also publishes a Summary of Economic Projections. Each participant submits their own forecast for growth, unemployment, inflation and the policy rate they think would be appropriate.

The chart of those rate projections is the dot plot. It is worth being careful with: it is a set of individual views recorded on one day, not a plan, not a promise, and not a forecast the Committee has agreed on.

Unscheduled meetings

The dates above are the scheduled ones. The Committee can and does meet outside them when conditions demand it — in March 2020 it cut rates twice between scheduled meetings. A published calendar tells you when the Committee expects to act, not the only moments it can.