NEC director on possible hiring recession, labor market and more

(CBS, KYMA) - Kevin Hassett, Director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about a possible hiring recession.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' jobs report for November, the unemployment rate rose 4.6%, with analysts saying the U.S. is in a hiring recession.

This prompted Brennan to ask Hassett if the U.S. is in a hiring recession, to which Hassett said:

"No, I don't think so. I think that basically, the number was about what the market expected. It was a number that was less than 100 which is a little bit lower than you'd like. But then after that, we got the consumer price index numbers, which were really amazing. And so if you look at the three month moving average of core consumer prices, then they're running at an annual rate of about 1.6% way below the Fed's target. And my old friend, all the way back to grad school, Austin Goolsby, is now one of the Fed governors voting on interest rates, conceded that they should have cut rates faster and that he's going to do so in the future because of this inflation number."

During the interview, Brennan and Hassett talked about the labor market, with President Donald Trump announcing further changes to immigrant policy as he halted diversity visas.

According to Brennan, 39 countries are on a travel ban or restricted list, in addition to the deportations and revocations of asylum.

However, the business community said with these policy changes made it difficult for them plan, particularly in the small business category.

When asked if he heard these concerns from the business community, Hassett said:

"Actually, it's the opposite. So in the sense that native-born workers are up more than 2 million. And so what we've seen is that as foreign-born workers, and a lot of them, don't forget, were illegal immigrants that have been deported, that when foreign-born workers depart, then it creates jobs for people who are native-born. The interesting thing too, which I'd like to remind everybody, is that native-born Americans aren't necessarily racially distinct at all.  And so the majority of the native-born jobs that have been created over the last year are Hispanic Americans. It's, you know, just basically taking folks that are legally in the country and getting the jobs to them is what we see in the data."

Later in the interview, Brennan and Hassett talked about the U.S. seizing a tanker off the coast of Venezuela Saturday, with Brennan bringing her previous interview with him saying it wouldn't affect oil prices.

This led Brennan to ask Hassett if he stands by his statement, and if the oil was going to China, and Hassett said:

"I haven't been briefed on the latest. I did see that this is another ship that was basically operating in the black market. And so there have been a little bit, there's been a little bit of black market activity in the oil sector to go to sanctioned countries and to get them some oil. And they're getting that oil in order to avoid the reforms that we think would make countries a better place. And so it's not a lot of oil compared to world supply. And so I don't think that people need to be worried here in the U.S. that the prices are going to go up because of these seizures of these ships. There's just a couple of them, and they were black market ships."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Hassett, click here.