Clouds are darkening on America’s economic horizon as a large number of sidelined workers force businesses to raise wages to attract talent, adding to inflationary pressures and pushing the Fed to keep tightening aggressively, according to an economist and professor at King’s College, who warned that the country is perched on “the brink of a deeper recession.”

Brian Brenberg, an executive vice president and associate professor of Business at King’s College, told Fox News in an interview that aired Wednesday that a troubling number of Americans have dropped out of the workforce, forcing businesses to compete for labor by hiking wages, pushing inflation higher.

“If you look at the labor participation rate numbers, it’s lower today than it was before the pandemic started,” he said.

Under President Donald Trump, the labor force participation rate grew from 62.9 percent in February 2017, his first full month in office, to 63.4 percent in February 2020.

The metric plunged in April 2020 to 60.2 percent as the country locked down during the pandemic. The most recent data for July 2022 shows the labor force participation rate stood at 62.1 percent.

This “means we’re about three million jobs behind where we should be,” Brenberg said of the current labor force participation rate. “Businesses feel that.”