President Donald Trump indirectly revealed Friday’s market-moving nonfarm payrolls data in a social media post Thursday night, a clear violation of long-standing federal policy regarding the release of statistics.
In a post on Truth Social around 9 p.m. ET, the president suggested that private sector payrolls will increase by 654,000 for all of 2025, and that total includes Friday’s December payrolls.
Office of Management and Budget policy prohibits executive branch officials from commenting on such announcements early, and in fact prohibits them from speaking publicly until 30 minutes after the announcement.
The president will be briefed on official employment statistics prior to their release.
However, a White House official acknowledged that “aggregated data derived in part from pre-release information was inadvertently released to the public.” In response, the White House is reviewing its procedures for releasing economic data.”
The official also accused the media of “grasping at straws and stirring up another false controversy” and urged them to focus instead on “how President Trump’s policies are laying the foundation for economic recovery as GDP and real wage growth continue to accelerate.”
Trump’s post made a distinction between private and government employment growth, with the latter declining by 181,000 jobs in 2025.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ December employment report, posted by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social account about 12 hours before the numbers were released, can be seen in this screenshot taken on January 9, 2026.
@realdonaldtrump | via Reuters
Friday’s jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls rose by 50,000 in December, with all but 2,000 of those jobs coming from the private sector. The figure was slightly lower than official economists expected, but eased fears of a sharp drop in employment. In response to this data, stock futures prices were on an upward trend.
Traders were unable to calculate the exact number of jobs due to a lack of data on the revisions in Trump’s post, but they were able to glean a rough estimate of the number and may have been able to rule out a job loss scenario in December that would have spooked the market.
Mr. Trump once drew criticism for sending a somewhat positive telegram on employment data during his first term.
