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But for now, at least, talk of worst-case scenarios -- runaway inflation that the Fed struggles to tame, or "stagflation" in which prices and unemployment rise in tandem -- has been ceding the conversation to cautious optimism.
但至少就目前而言，对最坏情况的讨论--美联储难以抑制的通胀失控，或者物价和失业率同步上升的"滞胀"--已经让位于谨慎的乐观。
In an interview last week Lael Brainard, a top White House economic adviser, said: "We have seen a huge string of shocks, so I can't predict what the future will hold. But so far, the data is very much consistent with moderating inflation and a still-resilient job market."
白宫高级经济顾问莱尔·布雷纳德上周在接受采访时说："我们已经看到了一系列巨大的冲击，所以我无法预测未来会发生什么。但到目前为止，数据与通胀放缓和就业市场仍具韧性的情况非常一致。"
Economists have become more optimistic for two main reasons. The first is inflation itself, which has cooled rapidly in recent months. The Consumer Price Index in June was up just 3 percent from a year earlier, compared with a peak of 9 percent last summer. That is partly a result of factors that are unlikely to repeat -- no one expects oil prices to keep falling at a rate of 30 percent per year, for example.
经济学家变得更加乐观，主要有两个原因。首先是通胀本身，近几个月来通胀迅速降温。6月份的消费者价格指数与去年同期相比仅上涨了3%，而去年夏天达到了9%的峰值。这在一定程度上是因为一些不太可能重演的因素，例如，没有人预计油价会继续以每年30%的速度下跌。
But measures of underlying inflation have also shown significant progress. And consumers and businesses appear to expect price increases to return to normal over the next few years, which makes it less likely that inflation will become embedded in the economy.
但衡量潜在通胀的指标也显示出重大进展。消费者和企业似乎预计，物价上涨将在未来几年恢复正常，这降低了经济中的通胀变得顽固的可能性。
Cooling inflation could allow the Fed to continue to slow its campaign of interest rate increases, or perhaps even to stop raising rates altogether earlier than planned. That could reduce the chances that policymakers go too far in their effort to control inflation and wind up causing a recession by mistake.
通胀降温可能会让美联储继续放慢加息的步伐，甚至可能比原计划提前停止加息。这会降低政策制定者在控制通胀方面用力过猛，从而最终错误地导致经济衰退的可能性。
"Things have been going in the direction you would want them to go in order for you to get a soft landing," said Louise Sheiner, a former Fed economist who is now at the Brookings Institution. "It doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get it, but certainly it's more likely than if inflation was still at 7 percent," she continued.
"事情在朝着为了实现软着陆而需要的方向发展。"前美联储经济学家、现供职于布鲁金斯学会的路易丝·谢纳表示，"这并不意味着一定会出现软着陆，但肯定比通胀仍然是7%的情况可能性更大。"她补充说。
The second reason for optimism has been the gradual cooling of the labor market from a rolling boil to a strong simmer. The rapid reopening of the economy in 2021 led to a huge imbalance between supply and demand: Restaurants, hotels, airlines and other businesses suddenly had hundreds of thousand of jobs to fill and not enough people to fill them.
乐观的第二个理由是，劳动力市场从沸腾滚烫逐渐降温为强劲的轻微沸腾。2021年经济的迅速重启导致了巨大的供需失衡：餐馆、酒店、航空公司和其他企业突然有数十万个工作岗位空缺，但没有足够的人来填补。
For workers, it was a rare moment of leverage, resulting in the fastest wage growth in decades. But economists worried that those rapid gains could make it hard to get inflation under control.
对于劳动者来说，这是一个难得的杠杆时刻，导致了数十年来最快的工资增长。但经济学家担心，工资快速增长可能会使通胀很难得到控制。
In recent months, however, the frenzy has subsided. Employers are not posting as many job openings. Employees are not hopping from job to job as freely in search of higher pay. At the same time, millions of workers have joined or rejoined the work force, helping to ease the labor shortage.
然而，近几个月来，这种狂热已经平息下来。雇主发布的空缺职位数量没有以前那么多。员工不会为了寻求更高的薪酬而像以前那样自由地跳槽。与此同时，数以百万计的劳动者加入或重新加入劳动力大军，这有助于缓解劳动力短缺。
So far, however, that easing has happened without a significant increase in unemployment. The jobless rate is roughly where it was in the strong labor market that preceded the pandemic.
然而，到目前为止，这种劳动力的宽松并没有导致失业率大幅上升的情况。失业率与疫情爆发前强劲的劳动力市场水平大致相当。
Some industries, such as tech and finance, have laid off employees, but most of those workers have found other jobs relatively quickly. Jan Hatzius, chief economist for Goldman Sachs, told us that labor market overheating is diminishing substantially, to levels where it's no longer so worrisome.
一些行业，如科技和金融，已经开始裁员，但大多数人很快找到了其他工作。高盛首席经济学家简·哈丘斯表示，劳动力市场过热的情况正在大幅缓解，达到了不再那么令人担忧的水平。
