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., the president suggested private sector payrolls would increase by 654,000 for all of 2025, and that total would include 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.
CNBC has reached out to the White House for comment. The president will be briefed on official employment statistics prior to their release.
Trump’s post made a distinction between private and government employment growth, with the latter declining by 181,000 jobs in 2025.
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.
Trump’s post said traders were unable to calculate the exact number of jobs due to a lack of data on the revisions, 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.
