Trump "leaked"! Posted about US Nonfarm Payroll data 12 hours early

US President Donald Trump has once again broken with tradition: he prematurely disclosed part of the employment data that was supposed to be officially announced 12 hours later.

At 8:30 am Eastern Time on Friday, January 9, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the December 2025 US Nonfarm Payrolls Report, revealing employment data for the whole year. After the data was released, financial media and observers found that a chart posted by Trump at 8:20 pm Eastern Time on the evening of the 8th on his own social media platform already included the December data that was supposed to be released on the 9th.

As shown in the screenshot below, the chart published by Trump shows that since "January," the US private sector added a total of 654,000 jobs, while government sector employment decreased by a net 181,000 jobs. This matches exactly the private sector employment numbers released by the BLS on Friday for 2025. Trump's chart was published about 12 hours ahead of the official scheduled release time. Based on the time of the chart’s release, Trump must have received the December employment data scheduled for Friday at least 12 hours in advance, and exposed it half a day early.

Nick Timiraos, chief economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal—considered the “new Fed wire service”—retweeted social media posts organizing monthly private and government sector employment changes from official data since January, and added further explanation:

Trump’s post was published at 8:20 pm Eastern Time on Thursday night, during a window when the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) had already received the December employment report, but BLS had not yet released the data publicly. If one could access the yet-unpublished December data and the revised figures in that time window, then the private sector jobs number Trump mentioned would be fairly accurate.

Usually, the US President receives a briefing on the data the day before the official release. The White House has not commented on this matter yet.

According to the BLS data officially released on Friday, US nonfarm payrolls in December increased by only 50,000, lower than the market expectation of 65,000, and the unemployment rate fell from 4.6% to 4.4%. For the whole year, nonfarm employment increased by 584,000, marking the worst annual performance since employment plummeted by 9.2 million in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.

Private Sector Employment Growth Hits 20-Year Low

The nonfarm payrolls report shows that private sector employment in December increased by only 37,000, far below the level of the same period last year. This data became the core of Trump’s premature disclosure—the chart he published shows the private sector added 654,000 jobs since January.

According to Timiraos, in 2025, private sector employers averaged only 61,000 new jobs per month, the weakest growth outside of recession since the so-called “jobless recovery” of 2003.

Industry breakdown shows job growth was concentrated in leisure and hospitality and healthcare, with the latter adding 21,000 jobs in December. But healthcare added only 34,000 jobs per month last year, below the average monthly increase of 56,000 in 2024. Retail, construction, and manufacturing saw declines, and five out of eleven major industries saw employment decreases.

Major Downward Revisions to Historical Data Highlight Weakness

Friday’s report shows that, aside from December's employment growth falling short of expectations, the BLS significantly revised down data from the previous two months. October nonfarm employment was revised down from a decrease of 105,000 to a decrease of 173,000; November was revised down from an increase of 64,000 to an increase of 56,000—a combined revision of 76,000 for the two months.

The revised data led to a three-month moving average employment change shrinking by 22,000. Commentators noted that even considering reduced labor supply, this is not a positive signal for future consumer spending.

Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Michigan, said: “The employment report continues the trend seen in all other data—a weakening labor market. We’re not seeing much job growth, but it’s not translating into mass unemployment.”

Unemployment Rate Drop Shuts January Rate-Cut Window

Despite weak job growth, the unemployment rate for December fell from 4.6% to 4.4%, returning to the level before the record-long government shutdown. The drop was partly due to labor force participation falling to 62.4%, meaning some unemployed people exited the labor market completely and are no longer counted as “actively seeking work.”

The fall in the unemployment rate completely eliminated market expectations for a Fed rate cut in January. After the data was released, traders maintained their expectation that the Fed would hold steady at the January meeting, and projected that the Fed would cut rates by a total of 50 basis points (twice) in 2026. The S&P 500 opened higher and US Treasury yields rose.

Christopher Hodge, chief US economist at Natixis, said: “Given that influential Fed leadership is firmly committed to preventing any further labor market weakness, this report should provide ammunition to hawks advocating a greater focus on inflation.”

Wage growth remained relatively strong, with average hourly earnings rising 0.3% month-on-month, and the previous value revised up to 0.2%. Over the past 12 months, wage growth stood at 3.8%, about one percentage point higher than inflation. However, the number of long-term unemployed—those unemployed for 27 weeks or more—rose by nearly 400,000 last year, the largest increase since 2020.

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