President violates secrecy rules with tweet on jobs data

WASHINGTON — President Trump broke years of presidential protocol Friday by posting a tweet that signaled a strong jobs report was on its way from the Labor Department an hour before the report was released.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics routinely releases its monthly employment report on the first Friday of the month. The night before, under longstanding tradition, the president and several senior administration officials are briefed on the numbers, which they are not supposed to disclose until the report is made public at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time the next morning.

But Trump, who was briefed on the numbers Thursday evening, appeared to foreshadow the strength of the latest report Friday morning on Twitter at 7:21 a.m.: “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.”

Social media users saw the message as evidence that Trump had seen the numbers, and that they were good. Sure enough, the report showed that the economy added 223,000 jobs in May, above forecasters’ expectations. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.8 percent — the lowest level in 18 years.

On Wall Street, where the 8:30 a.m. release on Jobs Friday is a major event for the markets each month, traders disagreed on whether the tweet actually moved prices, which fluctuate constantly and make it difficult to determine if any single event pushed them in one direction or another. But observers also said it is clear that watching the presidential Twitter feed is now being incorporated into the ritual of preparing for the Bureau of Labor Statistics update.

“I think the markets certainly paid attention,” said Aaron Kohli, a government bond market strategist at BMO Capital Markets in New York. “And will do so next month should there be a tweet, or lack of one.”

Even before the numbers were released Friday, economists said they were stunned at the prospect that Trump was giving hints about the report’s content, which fast-acting traders could seize on to place bets on an optimism-fueled market surge.

“Sharing them with the public is destabilizing and inappropriate,” said Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in Obama administration.