As a result, the central bank is widely expected to pause its rate-cutting campaign at its meeting this month, a message reiterated by Fed officials in a series of speeches this week.

“While this is not my fundamental forecast, I cannot rule out the risk that progress on inflation could continue to stall,” Michelle Bowman, a Fed governor, said in a speech Thursday.

Ms. Bowman, the only Fed official to oppose the central bank’s half-point rate cut in September, voted for the more traditional quarter-point cut last month. However, she said in her speech that she could have “supported maintaining rates in December” and suggested she was unlikely to support a cut in January unless economic conditions had improved before the meeting ended of the month changed significantly.

“Given these considerations, I continue to favor a cautious and gradual approach to policy adjustment,” Ms Bowman said.

The Fed can afford to be cautious as the labor market remains strong. After a summer scare, the unemployment rate has stabilized, job growth has recovered and layoffs remain low. That gives policymakers confidence that they can keep interest rates at around 4.4 percent without running the immediate risk of a deeper economic slowdown.

“The strength of the economy allows us to be patient,” Jeff Schmid, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said in a speech Thursday. Mr. Schmid will become a voting member of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee, which sets policy, at its January meeting.

The bigger question is what happens if the economy, and particularly the job market, weakens while inflation remains stubborn.

“The labor market is in rough equilibrium right now,” Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in a panel discussion Saturday. “At this point, I don’t want to see any further slowdown in the job market.”

There have been some signs in recent months that the labor market is weakening, although the unemployment rate remains low. The number of new hires has continued to decline and it is taking longer for the unemployed to find a job. If these trends strengthen, policymakers may decide they need to cut interest rates further, said Nancy Vanden Houten, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

“If hiring continues to slow or layoffs pick up a bit, I think the picture could change,” she said.

Ms. Bowman said Thursday that rapidly changing immigration trends, along with other factors, have made interpreting the monthly employment numbers difficult, which she said should make policymakers more cautious.

And Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston – who, like Mr Schmid, will vote on policy decisions this year – warned in a speech on Thursday against “overreactions to individual data values” and expressed her “concern about the fragility of the labor market in emerging markets has decreased.”