White House says it’s ‘reviewing protocols’ after Trump apparently violated federal policy by prematurely releasing employment data
The White House said Friday it was “reviewing protocols” around the release of economic data after President Donald Trump appeared to release sensitive employment information before its official release, a move that economists called “unprecedented” and potentially in violation of longstanding federal policy.
In a statement provided for informational purposes, a White House official said the episode stemmed from an “inadvertent public disclosure” following routine presidential briefings on economic data.
This happened “following the usual procedure whereby presidents are informed in advance of the release of economic data,” the official said. “The White House is therefore reviewing protocols regarding the release of economic data.”
The official bristled at criticism of the disclosure, arguing that media coverage had exaggerated its importance.
“Instead of grasping at straws to foment another false controversy, the media would be better off covering what today’s jobs report actually shows,” the official said, adding that President Trump’s policies are “setting the stage for an economic resurgence as GDP and real wage growth continue to accelerate.”
The comments come after Trump posted an image on Truth Social Thursday evening that included figures from Friday morning’s nonfarm payrolls report, hours before the data was publicly released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Office of Management and Budget policy prohibits executive branch officials from commenting on or releasing economic statistics on market developments before their official release, and also prohibits public statements until at least 30 minutes after their release. Although presidents are informed of employment data in advance, this information is treated confidentially.
Bharat Kumar, an economist at the financial firm Futures First, noted that the figures published in Trump’s message matched the final figures released Friday morning. Economist and University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers said on X that the disclosure was “unprecedented,” saying no previous White House had ever released market-moving employment data ahead of schedule.
“No serious country does this,” Wolfers wrote.
The figures would have been difficult to interpret anyway, because significant revisions to previous months meant that the truly new numbers could not be clearly isolated to show what happened in December alone, said Nick Timaraos, the Wall Street Journalnoted the chief economic correspondent of .
Friday’s jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls increased by 50,000 in December, with almost all of the gains coming from health care and welfare. Stocks rose slightly after the release, easing fears of a deeper slowdown in employment.
The leak had attracted limited attention before Kumar’s post, likely because the disclosure took place on Truth Social, a platform with a very small audience. According to the Pew Research Center, only 3% of American adults say they have ever used Truth Social, compared to 84% who use YouTube, 71% Facebook, 50% Instagram and 21% X.
Some media, instead of denouncing a scandal, had fun with this element of the mishap, the Financial Times” Alphaville voice paraphrasing the old hypothesis about a tree falling in the forest: “If a jobs report leaks on a social media platform that no one uses, does that move the market? (This reporter was delayed in filing his story because Truth Social appeared to be malfunctioning, preventing access to both the post and the president’s page.)
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
