Did Gov. Greg Abbott’s tweet on state jobless rate violate confidentiality rules?
Tweet, unreleased October data share similar language.
A tweet sent Wednesday by Gov. Greg Abbott might have violated rules on the confidentiality of workforce numbers prior to their official release.
“The Texas unemployment rate is now the lowest it’s been in 40 years & Texas led the nation last month in new job creation,” Abbott said in his tweet.
The governor’s office dismissed the notion that the tweet violated any rules, saying its mention of “last month” referred to September, the latest publicly available data as of that day. And a spokeswoman for the Texas Workforce Commission said the agency did not send the governor’s office any “prerelease” data for October until Thursday afternoon.
The commission released October’s workforce data Friday morning, and federal Bureau of Labor Statistics rules require that the data be kept confidential until its official public release.
A press release issued Friday by the workforce commission used language similar to that used in Abbott’s tweet to note that October’s 3.9 percent statewide jobless rate set a record “for the lowest unemployment rate recorded in four decades.”
The rate had ticked down from 4 percent in September. However, the statewide jobless rate last hit 4 percent in December 2000, not 40 years ago, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles state and local workforce numbers in conjunction with state agencies.
As for Abbott’s reference to job creation, Texas employers cut 5,000 jobs in September, a decline attributed to impact of Hurricane Harvey.
The governor’s office said the tweet referred to yearover-year job growth for September. Texas added 258,400 jobs in that 12-month span, trailing California’s 278,400 added jobs, according to the bureau’s data. (However, the 2.1 percent job-growth rate here exceeded California’s 1.7 percent increase.)
Texas did lead all the states in year-over-year job growth in October, adding 316,100 jobs since the same month last year. California added 256,800 jobs over the same 12-month period.
It’s common and appropriate for state workforce commissions to share “prerelease” data with governors’ offices and other officials, said Cheryl Abbot, regional economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Southwest regional office. However, she said, the bureau considers the data confidential until their official release.
The governor’s office said no early information was given to Gov. Abbott. Workforce commission spokeswoman Lisa Givens said pre-release data for October wasn’t sent to the governor’s office until 2:53 p.m. Thursday, and then only to an “individual who has a BLS confidentiality agreement.”
Givens said the commission only shares pre-release information with an individual who has signed such an agreement. “This has always been TWC’s protocol and are BLS rules,” she said.
If the governor’s tweet referred to the October numbers, it would represent a minor breach of confidentiality requirements expected by the bureau.
“It was a big deal for Texas, but there weren’t any numbers or details put out,” said Abbot, the bureau economist.
“It was relatively minor, but I’m assuming someone with our federal-state operations division ... will likely be contacting the Texas Workforce Commission and discussing the rules.”
Accidental releases aren’t uncommon, she said, happening maybe once a year across the 11-state region of which Texas is a part. She said the bureau simply reaches out to clarify policy with state officials.