Washington

FEDERAL Reserve policymakers said that the job market has made further gains, keeping them on a path to raise interest rates this year for the first time in almost a decade without providing a clear signal on the timing of lift-off.

"The labour market continued to improve, with solid job gains and declining unemployment," the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement on Wednesday in Washington. It dropped the modifier "somewhat" from its description of the decline in labour-market slack.