Published: Thursday, 22 Oct 2009 | 11:53 PM ET

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The U.S. Federal Reserve is concentrating on keeping the economic recovery on track and is in no rush to pull back its extensive life support measures, senior Fed officials said on Thursday.

Oliver Quillia for CNBC.com The New York Stock Exchange, downtown New York City.

"We have to think about our exit policy and are looking at it very carefully, but at the moment, that's not our first order concern, at the moment, it's policy accommodation," Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said while speaking on a panel at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy.

"I think that the recovery is going to be very unsatisfactory in 2010," he said.

His colleague, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, voiced a similar view.

"We need to wait for more progress (on the economy) before we take some stimulus away," Rosengren told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of the Boston Fed's annual conference on Cape Cod.

Evans's and Rosengren's comments are in line with other Fed officials who view the recovery as tepid despite signs growth resumed in the third quarter and worry that a high and rising unemployment rate will sap spending and confidence.

Evans, who will vote on the Fed's policy-setting panel in 2010, said he expects unemployment to rise above ten percent.

Rosengren, also a Fed voter in 2010, said policy-makers would need to see private consumption, including housing, pick up before the Fed can remove monetary stimulus.

The Fed has cut rates to near zero and pledged to hold rates ultra-low for an extended period to support the recovery. Its next policy-setting meeting is Nov. 3-4 and it is not expected to signal any movement toward an exit then.

High unemployment and low inflation rates both indicate that policy accommodation is in order, Evans said.

The unemployment rate, which touched a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September, is likely to retreat only slowly, Evans said.     

"It is not going to feel like a recovery for some time," he said.

With modest economic growth, household spending will be restrained and businesses will face weaker demand for their goods and services, Evans said.

Some on the Fed worry that a long period of very low interest rates, coupled with the massive expansion of cash available to the economy, pose dangerous risks of igniting inflation when the recovery gets firmly going.

But Evans said that with weak labor markets and ample idle factory capacity, there is a sufficient slack in the economy to set aside inflation fears.

Chicago Fed President Charles Evans Charles Evans

If anything, low levels of inflation are a concern, he said. He said inflation is expected to remain below his preferred level of around 2 percent for some time.

However, Evans said recent volatility in the dollar -- which recently fell to 14-month lows against a basket of currencies amid concerns about the ballooning U.S. federal budget deficit and exploding debt -- would not have much impact on inflation in the current environment.

"At the moment inflationary pressures are pretty muted so I am not especially concerned about whatever implications those movements (in the dollar) might have for inflationary pressures," he said.

Still, he said the Fed is monitoring swings in the U.S. currency.

New York Fed President William Dudley said on Thursday the U.S. central bank may not lose money on the emergency programs it put in place to fight the crisis while Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said many of the emergency facilities were winding down. Both officials took part in the Boston Fed's Cape Cod meeting.

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