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By Peter Aitken
Politics Weekend Editor
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President Donald Trump on Thursday night posted jobs data that had yet to be released on the December jobs report, prompting concerns about the motive behind posting the data early and without the necessary corrections.
A White House official told Newsweek: "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 White House is accordingly reviewing protocols regarding economic data releases,' the official said. "Instead of grasping at straws to foment another fake controversy, however, the media would be better off covering what today’s job report actually shows: President Trump’s policies are laying the groundwork for an economic resurgence as GDP and real wage growth continue to accelerate."
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Why It Matters
Trump has brought significant scrutiny on the jobs numbers after he fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a significant revision of jobs over the summer in 2025, saying that she had been a Biden administration appointee and accusing her of faking job numbers before the 2024 U.S. presidential election to help Kamala Harris.
"I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes," Trump wrote at the time.
However, the jobs data has not improved over the following months, with the federal government shutdown only adding further salt to the economic wounds with which the administration has grappled.
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What To Know
Trump, in a Truth Social post on Friday evening, posted a graph of private and government job changes in December, with the graph showing an increase of 654,000 private sector jobs compared to a decrease of 181,000 government jobs.
The president previously claimed that the unemployment rate in the November jobs report did not accurately reflect the nature of the job market, with the vast number of jobs lost in that report due to cuts in federal jobs.
Trump did not post any comment or context to the graphic he posted on Thursday night, leaving many to question the point in releasing the data as he did—with some wondering if the goal was to influence the market reaction.
The December jobs report released Friday showed a much less rosy picture of the jobs market compared to what the president's graphic had implied: The BLS report on Friday showed the U.S. adding only around 50,000 jobs, down from November's initial reported total of 64,000 jobs.
The report included data on November's jobs report, with nonfarm payrolls for the month revised down by about 8,000 jobs, which compounds the already considerable losses from October, bringing the total revision of the previous two months to around 76,000 fewer jobs than initially believed.
Social Media Speculation About Trump's Job Post
Trump's post, therefore, has drawn immense speculation, with some accusing the president of attempting to influence market reaction to the jobs data. Spencer Hakimian, the founder of Tolou Capital management, wrote on X that the president's post amounted to "MASSIVE FRAUD."
Mike Konczal, the former director at the Roosevelt Institute and former chief economist of the National Economic Council under President Biden, wrote on X that "the tell, and its kind of funny, is that if he tweeted out the data as it was understood last night it would have been a better number (at 687K), because negative revisions more than offset the new job gains."
Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California, a Democrat, accused the Trump administration of "fudging our jobs data," citing a report from December by the Wall Street Journal that reported Federal Reserve staffers are concerned that jobs data is overstating job creation.
However, on BlueSky, MS NOW anchor Catherine Rampell noted that "someone probably made a lot of money off of this," adding that "the reason these numbers are kept under seal until 8:30am sharp is that they move markets."
Her comment reflects a growing concern that individuals are using inside information to make money off betting markets, such as when one user made a $30,000 bet on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro being removed from power in January, just hours ahead of the U.S. capturing and extracting him to the U.S., leading to a $400,000 payout on the wager.
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