The Federal Reserve confirmed it will end an asset-purchase program that has added $1.66 trillion to its balance sheet, and the Fed maintained a pledge to keep interest rates low for a "considerable time."

"Labor market conditions improved somewhat further, with solid job gains and a lower unemployment rate," the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said today in a statement in Washington. "A range of labor market indicators suggests that underutilization of labor resources is gradually diminishing," the panel said, modifying earlier language that "there remains significant underutilization of labor resources."

Policy makers said that while inflation in the near term will probably be held down by lower energy prices, it repeated language from its September statement that "the likelihood of inflation running persistently below 2 percent has diminished somewhat."