Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, speaks on "U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy: Where to From Here?" during at luncheon in Hong Kong April 4, 2014. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A hawkish Federal Reserve policymaker applauded the U.S. central bank’s reluctance to react to last month’s market volatility, saying on Monday that in part won his support for last week’s policy statement.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, who dissented against the central bank’s September policy decision but reversed course last week, said the U.S. economy is clearly headed toward increasing employment and inflation rising to the Fed’s 2-percent target.

Despite a volatile market selloff in early October that also depressed some inflation readings, the Fed last week sounded a confident tone that both the labor market and inflation would strengthen.

The fresh policy statement no longer described labor market slack as “significant,” and it said that a rate rise could come sooner or later than expected depending on economic data, changes Fisher applauded.

“I was encouraged by the wording we negotiated at the last FOMC meeting,” he said in prepared remarks to a Shadow Open Market Committee forum.

He said the data-dependent nature of the new policy statement effectively “neutered” the use of the word “considerable” to describe how much longer the Fed will keep rates near zero. “This is why this particular hawk voted ‘yes’ in support of the statement,” he said.

Fisher, who will step down early next year, said Fed Chair Janet Yellen has proven herself so far this year as neither a hawk nor a dove, but as “impressively balanced.” Hawks tend to worry about a run-up in inflation while doves are generally more concerned about too-high joblessness.

(This version has been refiled to fix typo in second paragraph)