WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve plans to keep a key interest rate at a record low to support a U.S. job market that’s improving but still isn’t fully healthy and help lift inflation from unusually low levels.

As expected, it’s also ending a bond purchase program that was intended to keep long-term rates low.

The Fed today reiterated its plan to maintain its benchmark short-term rate near zero “for a considerable time.” Most economists predict that the Fed won’t raise that rate before mid-2015. The Fed’s benchmark rate affects the rates on many consumer and business loans.

In a statement ending a policy meeting, the Fed suggested that the job market, though still not back to normal, is strengthening. The statement drops a previous reference to “significant” in referring to an “underutilization” of available workers.

The U.S. economy has been benefiting from solid consumer and business spending, manufacturing growth and a surge in hiring that’s reduced the unemployment rate to a six-year low of 5.9 percent.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen has stressed that while the unemployment rate is close to a historically normal level, other gauges of the job market remain a concern. These include stagnant pay; many part-time workers who can’t find full-time jobs; and a historically high number of people who have given up looking for a job and are no longer counted as unemployed.

What’s more, inflation remains so low it isn’t even reaching the Fed’s long-term target rate of 2 percent. When inflation is excessively low, people sometimes delay purchases — a trend that slows consumer spending, the economy’s main fuel.