Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen lent credence Thursday to a Congressional Budget Office study of the minimum wage that White House economists had criticized for its finding that an increase favored by President Obama would cost 500,000 jobs.

In an unusual criticism of the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, Jason Furman, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, had responded to the CBO report by directly challenging its estimates of job losses, claiming that they “do not reflect the overall consensus view of economists.”