US Federal Reserve officials will keep interest rate policy steady next week, content to watch the gradual slowing in the economy but still wary of inflation's potential, analysts say.

Amid signs the hard-charging expansion has begun to brake, there is scant reason for the Federal Open Market Committee to decide when it meets on Wednesday to resume a rate-rising campaign that has been on hold since May.

But equally, the US central bank is likely to keep its guard up against inflation as it assesses whether higher energy prices are working their way onto store shelves and whether wage rises are threatening to set off a wageprice spiral.

The outcome of policymakers' deliberations, analysts say, will be no change in key rates and a repetition of the warning that risks remain tilted toward inflation rather than a sharp fall-off in growth.

That will keep the federal funds overnight bank lending rate that determines credit costs in the world's largest economy and beyond at 6 1/2 per cent, the same level it has held since an unusually large one-half percentage point rise in May.