Any move to pull back support for the economy, by first slowing the U.S. central bank's $120 billion in monthly bond purchases, is "still a ways off," Powell said in comments to the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

Despite recent job gains "there is still a long way to go" in pulling millions of people from the sidelines, many of them lower-wage, Black or Hispanic workers hit hardest by the recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, Powell said.

Powell will testify again, on Thursday, before the Senate Banking Committee.