Carney on ‘Kudlow’: Government ‘Gummed Up’ Labor Market, We’ll Have Recession with Inflation Above 4%

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Breitbart Economics Editor John Carney said that the decline in the labor force participation rate in the November jobs report shows “the government has gummed up the works of the labor market” and predicted that we will have a recession in 2023 while inflation will remain above 4%.

Carney said that the jobs number came in “much hotter” than expected, in part due to a surge in construction jobs due to the recovery from Hurricane Ian. But, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell is “going to look at this number and regret as being as dovish as he was on Wednesday.”

Carney later added, “Well, we should be seeing the labor force grow right now, because, given where wages are, wages are rising pretty rapidly. And so, we should be seeing people being drawn in. And instead, we’ve been seeing, for months now, the opposite. And I think this is a sign that the government has gummed up the works of the labor market. And so, the alternative now, our answer, Jay Powell’s answer is, we’re going to try to make it — make there be less demand for work. We spent most of our lives trying to figure out how to get people employed. And now we’re actually now going to have a policy that’s going to try to make people unemployed.”

He concluded, “I say we have a recession, but given the state of the labor market, not until the second half of next year. I used to think it was going to happen in the first quarter or second quarter. I think now, it’s going to happen in the second half of the year. I think inflation stays. I don’t think we get to 4% next year.”

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