Employers who complain about a shortage of suitable job candidates but have not raised wages to woo them are “whining,” according to a Federal Reserve official.

HR Dive reports that Neel Kashkaria, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, was not sympathetic to employers at a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Rotary Club meeting. Instead, the report says he told them, “If you're not raising wages, then it just sounds like whining. Are any of you planning to raise wages in the next year or two? Or are you just complaining about you can't find workers?”

Kashkari is a voting member of the Fed’s monetary policy committee. He has been on the side of lower interest rates, according to a report in the Washington Examiner, having argued that “the relatively slow wage gains of recent months indicate that the economy isn’t fully healthy.”

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