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By Howard Schneider
BATON ROUGE (Reuters) – The long-term neutral federal funds rate remains around 4 percent, not the lower levels some have said may result from a weakened economy, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart said on Tuesday.
Lockhart said he thought the economy would be strong enough over time to warrant a federal funds rate close to the long-term average. He also said he was confident that workers have not been locked out of jobs because of skills mismatch and will come back to work as conditions improve.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
