The Federal Reserve System (FRS) may raise the benchmark interest rate four times this year and start reducing the amount of assets on its balance sheet as early as July, if not earlier, experts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. believe.

Rapid progress in the recovery of the U.S. labor market and “hawkish” signals, which could be seen in the minutes of the December meeting of the Fed, suggest that the normalization of monetary policy by the U.S. Central Bank will be faster than expected, notes Goldman analyst Jan Hatzius.

 “In this environment, we are moving our forecast for the timing of the start of asset reduction on the Fed’s balance sheet to July from December and see the possibility of an even earlier start,” Goldman said in a survey.

 “While we continue to expect Fed rate hikes in March, June and September, we have also added a December hike to our forecasts,” Hatzius notes.

The minutes of the Fed’s December meeting, released last week, showed a hawkish attitude of the US central bank’s leaders amid high inflation and an improving labor market.

“Meeting participants mainly noted that, given their own outlook for the economy, labor market and inflation, a sooner-than-expected rate hike or a faster pace of rate hikes may be needed,” the minutes published Wednesday said.

In addition, the document notes that at the time of the Dec. 13-14 meeting, “several participants believed that conditions in the U.S. labor market were largely consistent with the notion of full employment.” Some of the Fed’s leaders also drew attention to the fact that the Fed may soon have to start reducing the amount of assets on its balance sheet after a rate increase.

Statdata on the U.S. labor market, released last Friday, showed a less significant than expected increase in the number of jobs in the U.S. in December.