The Fed's six rate cuts of 2024 and 2025, and where its key rate stands now

On September 18, 2024, the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time since March 2020. Its Federal Open Market Committee lowered the target range for the federal funds rate by half a percentage point, to 4.75% to 5.00%, from the 5.25% to 5.50% in place since July 2023. Five quarter-point cuts followed. The last, announced on December 10, 2025, left the range at 3.50% to 3.75%. By our count, that is 1.75 percentage points of cuts in all.

The federal funds rate is the overnight rate at which banks lend reserve balances to one another. The committee sets a target range for it, and the Fed Board keeps a running record of every change, listed by the date it took effect. For each of the six cuts below, that was the day after the committee's statement.

Every cut, with the votes

2024: a half-point start

The first move was the largest. In its September 2024 statement, the committee said it had "gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent" and judged the risks to its employment and inflation goals to be roughly in balance. One member, Michelle W. Bowman, voted against the decision because she wanted a smaller cut of a quarter point.

Two quarter-point cuts came next. November's was unanimous. In December, Beth M. Hammack dissented because she preferred to keep the range at 4.50% to 4.75%. The December statement also changed its wording on future moves, saying the committee would weigh "the extent and timing" of any further adjustments.

A nine-month pause, then three more cuts in 2025

The Board's record shows no change to the range between December 19, 2024, and September 18, 2025. When the committee cut again on September 17, 2025, the reason it gave had shifted from inflation to jobs. Growth had moderated in the first half of the year and inflation had moved up, the statement said, but "downside risks to employment have risen." Stephen I. Miran dissented in favor of a half-point cut.

Miran wanted a bigger cut again in October and December, while other members pulled the opposite way. Jeffrey R. Schmid preferred no change in October, and Austan D. Goolsbee joined him in December, so by our tally the final cut of the series passed 9 to 3, the most dissents among the six decisions. The October 2025 statement also said the Fed would stop reducing its securities holdings on December 1, and in December the committee said it would start buying shorter-term Treasury securities as needed to keep the supply of bank reserves ample.

What moved with the federal funds rate

The Fed also moved the rates it sets for banks directly. The interest rate paid on banks' reserve balances fell to 4.9% from September 19, 2024, and stood at 3.65% from December 11, 2025, according to the implementation notes issued with the first and last cuts. Over the same span, the primary credit rate, which the Fed charges on discount window loans, went from 5% to 3.75%.

Two benchmarks in the Fed's daily H.15 release show where market rates stand this month. The prime rate, the rate posted by a majority of the 25 largest insured U.S.-chartered commercial banks and described in the release as one of several base rates used to price short-term business loans, was 7.00% on each business day from November 3 to November 9, 2026. That is 3 percentage points above the top of the Fed's current range, by our arithmetic. The 10-year Treasury yield, which the U.S. Treasury interpolates from closing market yields on actively traded Treasury securities, was 4.88% on November 9.

Where the rate stands now

The easing did not carry on into 2026. In December 2025, the median projection of Fed officials put the federal funds rate at 3.4% at the end of 2026. The projections give midpoints of target ranges, so by our reading that pointed to one more quarter-point cut. Instead, the committee left the range at 3.50% to 3.75% until September 16, 2026, when it raised it by a quarter point to 3.75% to 4.00%. That statement said the increase would support a "timelier return" to the 2% inflation goal.

On October 28, 2026, the committee held the range at 3.75% to 4.00%, with Lisa D. Cook and Beth M. Hammack voting for another quarter-point increase. Our report on that decision sets out this year's votes. The committee next meets on December 8-9, 2026, one of the meetings at which members publish economic projections, according to its calendar.