President Donald Trump offered an early look at the closely held December jobs data.
Trump posted on Truth Social at 8:20 pm ET on Thursday a chart that included unreleased figures. Prior to Friday’s report, the totals for private and public sector jobs would not have been the same as the ones included in the chart.
The White House said the chart’s publication was “an inadvertent public disclosure.” A White House official said they would review protocols for economic data.
“Following the regular procedure of presidents being prebriefed on economic data releases, there was an inadvertent public disclosure of aggregate data that was partially derived from pre-released information,” the official said in a statement to Business Insider. “The White House is accordingly reviewing protocols regarding economic data releases.”
On Friday morning, economists were able to connect the dots following the release of the December jobs report to the public.
The US added 50,000 jobs in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report. The increase was less than expected. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.4%.
Historically, presidents are briefed a day ahead of the report’s publication. By protocol, the president and White House staff are not supposed to comment on the report until it is released.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Trump leaked the data early to distract from the disappointing economy.
“Job growth under Trump has stalled to levels not seen in more than 20 years outside recessions,” Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking committee, said in a statement. “That includes the private sector, where job growth slowed to less than half its 2024 pace. His decision to leak market-sensitive data was nothing but an attempt to distract from a failing economy.”
Economist Justin Wolfers called the episode “unprecedented.”
“No White House has ever before leaked such important market-moving numbers,” Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, wrote on X. “No serious country does this.”
Trump had a similar episode during his first term. In 2018, Trump touted jobs numbers an hour before the report’s release. Economists criticized the president at the time, though the White House said Trump had done nothing untoward.
“I don’t think he gave anything away, incidentally,” Larry Kudlow, the chairman of the National Economic Council, said in 2018. “I think this is all according to routine, law, and custom.”
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