U.S. employers have been adding enough jobs over the last six months to put the economy on track to full employment by the end of this year, but that prospect alone is unlikely to get the Federal Reserve to step on the brakes with interest rate hikes.

    A team of researchers at the Chicago Fed, headed by Dan Aaronson, estimated in April that the U.S. economy was about a million jobs shy of the Fed’s full employment goal.

    June’s outsize jobs gain, reported Friday, lifts the average monthly jobs increase over the past six months to 172,000. While that’s a step down from the 200,000 or more jobs added monthly last year, it still well outpaces the 50,000 new jobs a month needed to accommodate population growth, based on Aaronson’s estimate. That puts the economy on pace to reach full employment by December.

    But Fed officials have already suggested that uncertainty over the global impact of Britain’s intended withdrawal from the European Union will keep them on policy hold for the time being.

    Wall Street’s top banks unanimously expect the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged at their next two meetings in July and September and are almost evenly split over whether there will be a rate rise by year end, a Reuters poll Friday showed.

    Stubbornly low inflation, and hints that inflation expectations have dropped, also has policymakers inclined to wait. The Fed targets 2 percent inflation but, while underlying measures of inflation have firmed in recent months, most measures suggest it still has some ways to go.

    The 12-month average of the Dallas Fed’s trimmed mean PCE inflation rate, which some Fed officials follow as a measure of underlying inflation, registered 1.8 percent in May.

    Measures of inflation expectations have fallen. A market measure of bond investors’ 10-year inflation outlook, known as the 5-year, 5-year forward inflation breakeven rate, fell to 1.45 percent earlier last week, down from a recent peak of 1.8 percent April 29.(SD-Agencies)