WASHINGTON — With the economy still struggling to recover from the pandemic recession, Federal Reserve policymakers signaled Wednesday that their benchmark short-term interest rate will likely remain at zero at least through 2023 and probably even longer.

Fed chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference that while the economy has rebounded more quickly than expected, the job market is still hurting and the outlook is uncertain. The unemployment rate has fallen steadily since the spring but is still 8.4%.

“Although we welcome this progress, we will not lose sight of the millions of Americans that remain out of work,” Powell said.

The Fed left its interest rate, which influences borrowing costs for homebuyers, credit card users, and businesses, unchanged at nearly zero, where it has been pegged since the virus pandemic intensified in March. Fed policymakers hope an extended period of low interest rates will encourage more borrowing and spending, though their policy also carries the risk of inflating a bubble in stocks or other financial assets.

Fed officials said, in a set of quarterly economic projections, that they expect to keep rates at zero through 2023. And in a statement released after its two-day meeting, Fed policymakers said they wouldn’t raise borrowing costs until inflation has reached 2% and is “on track to moderately exceed” that level “for some time.”

The Fed’s projections show that they don’t expect inflation to hit that target until the end of 2023, suggesting a rate hike isn’t in the cards until 2024 or later.

“The Fed is now more dovish, by a long shot, than it has ever been,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont. Dovish generally refers to Fed officials seeking to keep borrowing costs low to support more hiring, while hawks typically support higher interest rates to ensure inflation remains under control.

On Wall Street, stocks initially got a short boost from the Fed’s actions before turning lower. The S&P 500 fell 0.5%. Still, some market analysts liked what they heard from the Fed.

“A better economy and a dovish Fed, that is a nice combo,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for LPL Financial.

But many analysts were disappointed the Fed was not more specific about how long it wanted inflation to stay above 2%, one likely reason that the stock market ultimately fell.

And some economists saw the Fed’s statement that it would keep rates at near zero until inflation was “on track” to top 2% as less dovish than they expected. They had hoped the Fed would say clearly that it would keep rates low until inflation was sustainably above 2%.