The White House was excited Friday when the first jobs report of the Trump administration came in stronger than expected.
But one official got carried away and broke an obscure federal rule by publicly touting the data too soon.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took to Twitter 22 minutes after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the February jobs report.
He tweeted that the 235,000 net new jobs and the slight decline in the unemployment rate was “great news for American workers.”
But the timing of the tweet was not great news for Spicer.
It didn’t take long for some experienced jobs-report watchers to note that he had jumped the gun and violated a longstanding prohibition against executive branch officials publicly commenting on the report within an hour of its release.
Specifically, Spicer broke the Office of Management and Budget’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 3, adopted in 1985.
“Except for members of the staff of the agency issuing the principal economic indicator who have been designated by the agency head to provide technical explanations of the data, employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time.”
Among those pointing out the violation was Jason Furman.
As chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama from 2013 until this past January, Furman emailed a lengthy analysis of the monthly jobs report and often went on TV to discuss the data.
Furman tweeted that the rule has been in place for decades and “everyone has followed it. Until now.”
