Washington ? The Federal Reserve kept a main short-term interest rate at a 45-year low Tuesday, an effort to keep the economic resurgence moving forward.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and his Federal Open Market Committee colleagues — the group that sets interest rate policy in the United States — kept the federal funds rate at 1 percent. The funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other on overnight loans, is the Fed’s primary tool for influencing the economy.

The decision was unanimous.

In a more upbeat note from the last Fed meeting in September, Fed policy-makers said “the labor market appears to be stabilizing.”

That contrasted with a weakening labor market mentioned in September.

Holding the funds rate steady means that commercial banks’ prime lending rate for many short-term consumer and business loans will remain at 4 percent, the lowest level since 1959. Any changes to the funds rate affects the prime lending rate.

Maintaining a climate of near rock-bottom short-term borrowing costs may give consumers and businesses an incentive to spend and invest more and thus boost economic growth.

Many economists believe the Fed policy-makers will leave rates unchanged not only at their last meeting this year — on Dec. 9 — but also into part of 2004.

“The economic story in their minds is by no means yet written and they want to be sure growth is on a significant and sustained path,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Capital Management.

Trader Eddie Dworkin, center, makes trades in the Fed Funds Futures Pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. He worked the floor Tuesday shortly after the Federal Reserve announced it would keep the federal funds rate at 1 percent.

The Fed last cut the funds rate on June 25 by one-quarter percentage point.