President Donald Trump on Friday tweeted out what appeared to be a tease of strong job numbers. | Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images Trump breaks protocol and jolts markets by teasing secret jobs numbers The anticipatory tweet by the president came more than an hour before the public saw the numbers.

President Donald Trump moved markets and busted norms on Friday morning with a tweet about the May employment report more than an hour before the numbers came out.

The post appeared to skirt strict rules on government employees not commenting on the highly sensitive economic data until an hour after its public release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.


Trump, who received the numbers Thursday night on Air Force One, did not include any of the jobs data in his tweet. But it appeared positive enough to suggest to Wall Street that a good number was coming Friday morning.

“Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” the president tweeted at 7:21 a.m.

And the numbers were in fact quite good, showing a better than expected gain of 223,000 jobs and a dip in unemployment to 3.8 percent, the lowest level since April of 2000, sending Dow futures higher.

Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2018

But markets were already moving before the release and popped immediately after Trump’s tweet, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note moving higher along with stock market futures. The rise in the 10-year yield suggested traders assumed Trump’s tweet meant the jobs number would be strong and push the Fed to raise interest rates more quickly.

Former Obama administration officials pounced on Trump’s tweet even before the public got to see the numbers, saying it violated rules banning federal employees with access to the jobs data from saying anything at all about it until 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.

The one-hour lag is meant to allow the jobs data—compiled by non-partisan career employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics—to stand on its own without any immediate spin from elected officials.

“We took the one-hour delay 100 percent seriously,” Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, said in an interview. “There were times when there was a good number and they wanted to send the president out to talk about it, but Air Force One was scheduled to leave at 9:15 a.m. and we would tell them to delay the flight until after 9:30 a.m.”

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Furman suggested Trump should no longer get the numbers in advance.

“The jobs number is the biggest market-mover there is, and this certainly undermines trust in the numbers and raises the specter that there is something much more sinister going on,” he said. “I’d suggest that CEA no longer give the president the number. And if they do give it to him and he says anything about it at all before release, they should share all the data with everyone immediately.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNBC that Trump was in fact briefed on the jobs report Thursday night and the tweet was appropriate because he did not put the numbers out early.

Larry Kudlow, chair of the National Economic Council, told CNBC he got the numbers Thursday evening and called Trump on Air Force One to share them.

“He chose to tweet. His tweet basically said, like everybody else, we await the jobs number. You can read into that 10 different things if you want to read into it,” he said. “I don’t think he gave anything away incidentally. I think this is all according to routine.”

But even short of offering the actual numbers, the mere fact that Trump would say he was “looking forward” to the release suggested to traders that the figures would be good. And if Trump doesn’t tweet about the numbers next time, it could suggest to Wall Street that a bad report is coming.

“If the president just tipped that the numbers are good, he broke the law,” former Obama CEA Chair Austan Goolsbee tweeted on Friday morning.

The White House’s CEA receives the jobs data from BLS around 1 p.m. on Thursday before the official release. The CEA chair then typically walks the number to the president in the Oval Office later in the afternoon or calls the president on the road. BLS also provides the data on Thursday to the chair of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary and the director of the NEC, in this case Kudlow. All are under strict guidance to saying nothing at all about the figures until one hour after their release.

A spokesperson for current CEA Chair Kevin Hassett did not immediately respond to request for comment on Friday.

The jobs report data is governed by rules issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget including the provision that officials wait an hour to say anything. A Labor Department economist on Friday described the delivery of the figures to the president as “a courtesy.”

Prior presidents generally followed the protocol closely, though in the 1960s President Lyndon Johnson had a habit of talking about the numbers in advance.

Andrew Hanna contributed to this report.