Still, Bernanke said in a Sept. 13 press conference after announcing QE3 that Fed officials would be looking for labor- market improvement that persists over a sustained period.

'Little Wiggles'

"It's not just a one-month or two-month phenomenon," Bernanke said. "We're not going to be looking for little wiggles in the numbers that are going to cause us to radically shift our policy."

None of the respondents in a Bloomberg survey of 60 economists expected the Fed to wind down QE3 at this meeting or the meeting in December, and most predicted the purchases will last at least one year or longer.

A report in two days from the Commerce Department may show that the pace of economic growth accelerated to 1.9 percent in the third quarter from 1.3 percent in the previous three-month period, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

"We're seeing things get a little bit better and that's certainly welcome and that's the direction they want things to go in, but they've told us they're going to err on the side of letting that momentum really take hold before they even consider stepping back," said Julia Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas SA in New York and a former Fed economist.

A Labor Department report on Nov. 2 is forecast to show that unemployment rose to 7.9 percent and employers added 120,000 workers to payrolls in October, scant improvement from the prior month's 114,000 pace that was the slowest in three months.

Housing has been a bright spot as mortgage rates driven to record lows by the Fed's asset buying spur demand.

Purchases of new homes rose in September to the highest level in more than two years, figures from the Commerce Department showed today.

Sales climbed 5.7 percent to a 389,000 annual pace, the most since April 2010, following a revised 368,000 rate in August. The median estimate of 75 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for sales to rise to 385,000.

A report last week showed that housing starts jumped 15 percent in September to the highest level in four years. Also, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index increased to the highest level since 2006.