The Fed Up Campaign:
Bringing the Fight for Full Employment & Worker Power to the Federal Reserve

A full-employment economy is a worker-power economy, and the Federal Reserve Bank controls the policy lever. The Fed Up Campaign needs your help to hold the Fed accountable to the interests of working people.

Sign up below to talk with a Fed Up Campaign organizer and become part of our #FedCasualty campaign.

About the Fed Up Campaign

Here’s why you should join us. The past few years have seen a surge in worker organizing and long-needed wage growth for many low-wage workers, especially from Black and brown communities. But wages still aren’t where they need to be for most workers.

The Fed controls this policy lever by setting the level of unemployment. An economy with low unemployment gives workers a foundation of confidence to demand what they deserve. Every six weeks, twelve senior leaders of the Fed meet at a key policy-setting meeting to make one main decision: How high should the unemployment rate be to keep the economy in balance?

The Fed’s anti-worker bias is clear in the current moment, where the Fed is addressing the current inflation problem with historically high interest rate hikes that are specifically designed to suppress worker power and slow worker wage growth, even though the growth of low-wage worker wages is not the major cause of inflation.

The Fed Up Campaign is pushing back and hold the Fed accountable to set policies that create underlying economic conditions that empower workers.

Sign our Petition!

12 leaders of the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, meet every six weeks to set the course of the economy: they decide how many people will be unemployed during economic recoveries.

We all know unemployment hurts Black and brown communities the most, taking away opportunities for generations and trapping people in cycles of poverty.

Everyone who wants to find a job should be able to find a job. Everyone deserves a chance for economic dignity, rising wages, and the opportunity to succeed.

OUR REPORTS

Uneven Progress, Inadequate Representation: 2022 Analysis of Diversity in Federal Reserve Leadership

May, 2022

Fed Up 10 Point Checklist for Fed Chair and Governor Nominees

September, 2021

Unrepresentative and Unaccountable: 2021 Analysis of Diversity in Federal Reserve Leadership

June, 2021

A Full-Employment Economy, A Federal Reserve That Works For Working People

April, 2021

The Federal Reserve is a Public Institution but is it Built to Represent the Public? 2020 Analysis of Diversity and Public Representation

July, 2020

Is the Federal Reserve Neglecting Black Workers in the Economic Rescue?

July, 2020

Aiming to Underachieve: How a Federal Reserve Lending Program for Local Governments is Designed to Fall Short

June, 2020

The Urgent Need For A More Publicly Representative Fed: 2019 Diversity Analysis of Federal Reserve Bank Directors

February, 2019

10 Years After: the Financial Crisis and the New York Federal Reserve District

March, 2018

The Full Employment Mandate of the Reserve: Its Origins and Importance

July, 2017

Prominent Economists Question Fed Inflation Target

June, 2017

Gender, Racial, & Sector Diversity at the Federal Reserve: 2016 vs. 2017

February, 2017

Fed Up Yearbook: 2014-2016

August, 2016

'Making the Federal Reserve Fully Public' by Jordan Haedtler, Andrew Levin, and Valerie Wilson

August, 2016

Mind the Gap: How the Federal Reserve Can Help Raise Wages for America's Women and Men

July, 2015

Our Agenda for the Federal Reserve

About Our Coalition

A People's Fed: How to Make the Fed Full Public, Executive Summary

In The News

OUR COALITION

Our Agenda

What's Happening and Why It Matters

Prioritize Maximum Employment

Wages of Black New Yorkers haven't changed in 15 years
The Fed‘s core policy decisions include targeting a specific rate of inflation to run the economy hot or to run the economy cold. The law gives the Fed a two-part mandate. Under this “dual mandate”, the Fed is supposed to push the economy to grow while balancing the interests of maximum employment (everyone who wants to work can find work) and stable prices (inflation isn’t too high). 
The Fed has to take a lot of things into account, but it is generally the case that price stability aligns with the interests of the financial sector and maximum employment aligns with the interests of working people. With its policy choices, the Fed decides to emphasize one side of the “dual mandate” over the other and one group of people over the other.
Progressive economists believe that “maximum employment” should mean a full-employment economy where anyone who wants a job can find one and where wages are rising for low-income workers because they have increased bargaining power.  As people who are about economic and racial justice, this is one of the most important policy goals that we can fight for because unemployment and underemployment strips wealth and opportunity from working communities around the country, especially in Black and Brown communities.

Since the Fed Up Campaign began organizing in 2015, we have won real progress.  The current Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, has begun to rebalance Fed policy, announcing in August, 2020 that Fed policy would have a greater emphasis on maximum employment and a commitment that the Fed to run the economy hot until we get there.

But we have not come nearly far enough.

Read our newest report about how the Federal Reserve can work for working people.

Expand the Policy Tools


The Fed has taken some good steps, but those steps have been merely adjusting the existing set of macroeconomic tools that it uses to manage the economy. Progressive economists believe that the Fed must embrace new macroeconomic tools in order to really fulfill the goal of full employment and rising wages.

As we look at the economic and political landscape in 2021, we believe that this is the moment to take on the Fed to win even bigger change. More people can see the economic need because the COVID crisis has left a stronger economy for people who were already doing well, but instead economic devastation for low-income and Black and Brown communities.

And more people can see the political possibilities because the activist progressive movement, which played such an important role in President Biden’s victory, has successfully demanded major changes in Congress’ budgetary and fiscal policies with wins such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan.

In this moment, we can’t let the Federal Reserve and monetary policy follow the same-old policies to help the same-old interest groups. We are demanding a new agenda for the Fed that is ambitious, realistic, and will make the Fed work for working people.

Six Ways to Transform the Fed

Our 2021 policy platform includes:

1. Achieving a true maximum-employment economy will have the greatest impact for working people, especially in Black and Brown communities, but it is usually the forgotten stepchild of the Fed’s “dual mandate”. Maximum employment must be made a specific and obligatory Fed target.
2. The racial unemployment gap is a persistent and devastating problem. It must be specifically and strongly addressed in Fed policy.
3. Millions of residents lack access to safe and low-cost financial services. The Fed should create a system of Fed-backed bank accounts – FedAccounts – for every resident. This can also serve as a mechanism to strengthen important new automatic fiscal stimulus programs.
4. The Fed uses its core lending capacity to back US government borrowing, as well as Wall Street and corporate financing markets. It must equally use that capacity to support Main Street and the real economy.

5. Weak oversight of the financial sector, especially the shadow-banking system, can allow systemic abuses that undermine the goal of reaching for a maximum employment economy. The Fed must strengthen its regulation of the financial sector.

6. The lack of diversity in the Fed’s senior leadership makes it less able to represent the interests of the broad public. The system of that names that leadership – including Fed Governors, regional Fed Bank presidents and regional Fed Bank directors – must be made more engaged with and accountable to the broad public.