U.S. policy makers should be confident that inflation is heading higher before raising interest rates, said Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren.

“Until there is stronger evidence that inflation will return to 2 percent ― versus a repeated forecast that it will ― I believe monetary policy makers should remain patient about removing accommodation,” he said in the text of remarks he is scheduled to deliver Tuesday in Lexington, Virginia.

Most Fed officials expect to raise interest rates next year for the first time since 2006 as the central bank nears its goal for full employment. At the same, the Fed isn’t getting any closer to meeting its inflation target.

“The Federal Reserve must respond as vigorously to inflation that is too low as we have, historically, when inflation has been too high,” said Rosengren, who will be a voter on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee in 2016.

To illustrate his argument, Rosengren drew attention to the struggles by central bankers in Japan and Europe to prevent deflation, or falling prices. Deflation can damage an economy by encouraging households and businesses to delay spending in anticipation that prices will be lower in the future.

“Experience in Japan and Europe increasingly indicate that it can be costly to be complacent when inflation gets too low,” he said. Rosengren said low 10-year German and Japanese bond yields show investors lack confidence the European Central Bank or Bank of Japan will succeed in lifting inflation. 

The Fed’s preferred measure showed prices rose 1.4 percent in September from a year earlier, the 29th consecutive month inflation was below the central bank’s 2 percent target. The U.S. jobless rate dropped to 5.8 percent in October, the lowest since July 2008, as employers added 214,000 workers to non-farm payrolls, Labor Department figures released Nov. 7 showed.

Rosengren said improvements in the job market haven’t produced wage inflation outside of a few hot spots in the economy.

“While particular states with a concentration in oil production have experienced very low unemployment rates and rising wages and salaries, the broader regional patterns do not show much evidence of a pickup in wages and salaries,” he said in a speech at Washington and Lee University. (Bloomberg)