The central bank is in no rush to tighten policy, even if inflation breaches its 2 percent goal for price increases, economists said in the survey.

Asked how much inflation the Fed would tolerate to bring unemployment down from a level of 8 percent or more, 39 percent of economists said the Fed would allow a 3 percent to 3.5 percent increase in the personal consumption expenditures index. The jobless rate was 8.3 percent in February.

Another 31 percent of respondents looked for a 3.5 percent to 4 percent rise, and 12 percent said prices would have to rise more than 4 percent to prompt Fed action.

Prices increased 2.4 percent from a year earlier in January, above policy makers' 2 percent target announced at their Jan. 24-25 meeting. Excluding food and energy, prices rose 1.9 percent.

Rising oil prices will probably push up the index temporarily, Bernanke said to lawmakers this month in his semiannual monetary policy report to Congress. The national average price for a gallon of gasoline was $3.80 on March 11, according to the American Automobile Association.

Bernanke has previously advocated holding policy steady as price shocks drove inflation higher. In September 2007, capacity utilization rose to 81.3 percent, the highest since a recession that ended in November 2001. Unemployment averaged 4.5 percent in the first six months of the year. Inflation exceeded policy makers' implicit target, with the PCE price index's annual rates averaging 2.5 percent during the first six months.

Still, the FOMC left the benchmark lending rate at 5.25 percent until Sept. 18, 2007, when it cut the rate by half a point as the financial crisis began to unfold.

"The higher gas prices go, the less the Fed is likely to worry about inflation because it's a damping effect on economic activity," said Donald Ellenberger, a portfolio manager at Pittsburgh-based Federated Investors Inc. whose $791.2 million U.S. Government Securities Fund for two- to five-year bonds has outperformed 96 percent of rivals over the past five years.

Next Decade

Investors expect prices to rise 2.29 percent over the next 10 years, as measured by the spread between Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and nominal bonds. That's up from a 2011 low of 1.67 percent.