Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said he is calling for “increasing amounts of policy accommodation” to reduce a 9 percent unemployment rate that’s far above the Fed’s objectives.

“We ought to be behaving as if there’s a very big problem out there,” Evans said in New York today at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Evans, 53, voted against the Federal Open Market Committee’s November decision to maintain its level of stimulus, casting the U.S. central bank’s first dissent in favor of further easing since December 2007. He said today that his position is “unusual” among policy makers.

Evans’ vote contrasted with those by three of his colleagues. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, Charles Plosser of Philadelphia and Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis earlier this year dissented against further easing in August and September.

The FOMC pledged in August to keep its target interest rate near zero until mid-2013, and policy makers agreed on a plan in September to cut borrowing costs by lengthening the maturity of the Fed’s bond portfolio in a program known as Operation Twist.