Late yesterday, Trump posted this on Truth Social:
The problem is, that number didn’t match up with what had been reported in the non-farm payrolls report data that had already been released. It also came after the Council of Economic Advisors was briefed on the jobs report (usually the afternoon before the release).
The numbers only make sense if you add in the data released today:
Now it would have taken some fancy modeling to map this to today’s release and trade on it because there were revisions to Oct/Nov data today that would have to be factored it.
That said, knowing these numbers certainly removed some of the tail risks around a very strong or very weak data point. The also highlight an administration that’s playing loose with market-moving economic data. It undermines confidence that all the jobs numbers aren’t leaked and traded on ahead of time.
In terms of market reaction, the US dollar has been all over the map since the release. The kneejerk was higher on the falling unemployment, then it reversed based on large downward revisions to the jobs number but it’s reversed again and the dollar is now broadly stronger.
Mixed in with that market reaction has been the Supreme Court punting on the tariff decision for the week and a Japanese report suggesting a February election is coming. We’re also dealing with flows around the start of the new year.
US stock markets are higher today and that could be driving some flows as well but note that gold just broke $4500 and that speaks to some of the chaos in international affairs and leaks like this undermining confidence. Remember that the gold rally really kicked off in late August when Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the agency that releases the non-farm payrolls report.
