President Donald Trump broke an embargo on the closely watched employment report that was published Friday morning, posting data from it on social media about 12 hours before the report was released to the public.
The monthly jobs report is one of the most closely watched sets of data that is released by the federal government and has the ability to move markets. The data has a tight embargo of 8:30 a.m. on the Fridays that it is released, although the president is briefed on the data ahead of it being made public.
FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT HAS FALLEN BY 277,000 UNDER TRUMP
Trump posted on Truth Social a chart indicating that federal government jobs have declined by 277,000 since January of 2025 and touting private sector job creation under his administration.
Those numbers are identical to the federal government employment data later released on Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Trump also posted a chart on the breakdown of job growth among native-born and foreign-born workers.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment, but didn’t receive a response.
Under long-standing Office of Management and Budget rules, administration officials are not supposed to comment on the release of important economic data until a certain time period after they are published.
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Trump ignored those rules several times in his first term by posting on social media about jobs numbers immediately after their release. Those actions drew criticism from Democrats at the time.
Thursday night’s posts, however, appear to be the first time that he divulged data before the official release time.
Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, said that the Thursday night post broke protocol.
“The president, nor anyone else in the federal government or anyone else who might have access to the data, should not be posting previews of market-sensitive economic reports,” Hamrick told the Washington Examiner.
The Friday morning jobs report showed federal employment was 2.738 million in November 2025, adjusted for seasonal variations, down from 3.015 million in January of that year. Federal employment is now down about 277,000 since Trump came into office.
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The number of federal employees is a key data point to examine the effects of the budget-cutting efforts of the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump created early in his second term.
Overall, the economy added 50,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.