Counting each word, Yellen's core message hasn't moved

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Janet Yellen

The Fed announced Thursday that they would leave interest rates unchanged in September, ending months of speculation but leaving open the possibility to raise them later this year.

Alternating FOMC meetings come with a press conference at the end and September was one of those, meaning reporters were treated to extra-long statements from Fed Chair Janet Yellen. Financial journalists love to obsess over the nitty gritty of edits to Fed statements. The Big Crunch took a look at Yellen's statements to the press over the past two years.

For the moment, it seems to be business as usual with the current federal funds rate. In fact, Yellen's top three words over her tenure as chair—"rate," "inflation" and "percent"—were used the same number of times in this meeting as in June: 26, 22 and 19 times, respectively.

We looked in particular at the statements Yellen made to the press after every other meeting. That's seven statements since she became chair in February 2014. We concentrated on her statements, thus weeding out conversations with reporters as well as a variety of common words such as "the," "so" and "it."

It seems that Yellen is as interest-rate obsessed as the rest of us because she's said "rate" 157 times—more than any other word.

Yellen noted in her statement that the nation's unemployment rate has declined and many market conditions have improved since the committee's previous meeting. But she cautioned that the Fed chose not to raise rates due to ongoing factors in the world economy.

"Recent global economic and financial developments are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term," she said.

Read MoreReading the tea leaves of Janet Yellen's every word

The Fed uses a number of indicators—including the labor market and inflation—to assess the health of the U.S. economy. Yellen has said in the past that the Fed is waiting to see concrete improvements in the data before they'll raise rates.

But she seemed to imply that a rate hike was still likely by the end of the year.

Of the top 50 words Yellen has used in her seven press conferences, uses of "year" and "expect" increased the most between the first and last.