The Federal Reserve is not sounding like an institution that is ready to raise its benchmark interest rate in June.

Fed officials at their most recent policy-making meeting in January worried that economic growth remained fragile, and that raising rates prematurely could undermine recent gains, according to an official account released Wednesday.

The account also described greater concerns than the Fed had disclosed previously about the sluggish pace of inflation and the decline of inflation expectations among investors.

"You can almost hear a little hesitation in the committee," said Zach Pandl, senior interest rate strategist at the investment firm Columbia Management. "They sound confident on the economy but nervous on pulling the trigger on rate hikes."

The economy is growing strongly, and the statement the Fed issued after the January meeting was its most upbeat since the end of the recession in 2009.

That optimism has since been reinforced by the government's latest jobs report, released this month, which estimated that strong employment gains at the end of 2014 continued at a healthy pace in January.

The Fed has gained enough confidence in the strength of the recovery that officials spent much of the January meeting discussing various aspects of raising the Fed's benchmark interest rate, which they have held near zero since December 2008.

At the meeting, some officials argued, as they have publicly, that there is a growing risk the Fed will wait too long before raising rates.

Yet the account suggested that the Fed's chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, and most members of her committee continue to regard the stimulus campaign as necessary. It said that many officials were concerned that raising rates prematurely "might damp the apparent solid recovery," potentially forcing the Fed to reverse course.

It also noted that fewer officials were concerned about the appearance of raising rates when inflation is running well below the Fed's 2 percent goal.

"Many participants indicated that their assessment of the balance of risks associated with the timing of the beginning of policy normalization had inclined them toward keeping the federal funds rate at its effective lower bound for a longer time," it said. The minutes were released after a standard three-week delay.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, said the account reinforced her view that the Fed would wait until September to begin raising short-term rates and would continue to move slowly thereafter.

"I don't get the sense that anybody wants to actually move in June," Ms. Swonk said. "I think they want to preserve the option, but you've still got inflation and wages not doing what you want. And that's tough."

Ms. Swonk said that disruptive winter storms in recent weeks also might put a temporary damper on economic data, as happened last winter, giving the Fed another reason to wait just a bit longer before moving.

Uncertainty about the evolution of the Fed's intentions has been heightened in recent months by a dearth of public comments by Ms. Yellen and other senior officials. Some of that fog may lift next week, when Ms. Yellen is scheduled to testify on monetary policy and the outlook for the economy before committees of both the House and the Senate.

Fed officials have long pointed toward June as the most likely timing for a first rate in crease, but sluggish inflation appears to be prompting second thoughts.

The Fed regards the collapse of oil prices as a temporary drag on inflation, but the trend has made it harder to gauge the actual health of the recovery. Wage growth remains weak, and some measures of inflation expectations have declined.

The account said many officials would like to see evidence inflation would rebound, but that they were fragmented regarding what, exactly, they would consider an appropriate signal. Some said they would be satisfied with strong economic growth, on the assumption that continued expansion would eventually increase inflation.

Others, however, said they wanted to see direct evidence of a rebound, either in wages or in measures of price inflation that exclude the direct effects of oil prices, which have dragged down the broadest gauges of price movements.

Officials also debated the significance of market-based measures of inflation expectations — basically, the compensation investors demand to offset the inflation they expect over the life of an investment. Those measures have fallen sharply in recent months, indicating that Wall Street traders expect annual inflation to average significantly less than 2 percent over the next five years.

Economists do not understand why inflation rises and falls, at least in the short term, but Fed officials put great stock in the view that public expectations about future inflation play a role in determining actual inflation.

Some Fed officials take comfort in the stability of survey-based measures of expectations, and argue that market-based measures are being distorted by unrelated forces, like a recent rush of investors buying Treasury bonds. But the meeting account said that other officials were increasingly concerned.

"A number of participants emphasized they would need to see either an increase in market-based measures of inflation compensation or evidence that continued low readings on these measures did not constitute grounds for concern," it said.

Fed officials will resume this debate at their next policy-making meeting, in March, when they must decide whether to retain language in the statement that says the Fed will be "patient" in deciding when to raise interest rates.

Ms. Yellen has said that the presence of the word means a rate hike was at least two meetings away. Some officials, including Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, want to remove the word to make clear the Fed will start raising rates as soon as economic conditions warrant.

The account, however, said that many Fed officials were worried that removing the statement might send a stronger s ignal than intended, suggesting that the first rate increase is imminent rather than merely possible.

"As a result, some expressed the concern that financial markets might overreact, resulting in undesirably tight financial conditions," it noted.