There are rules about when you can share certain pieces of information, and Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks President Trump just broke a big one. The Massachusetts Democrat slammed Trump for leaking December's U.S. employment data hours before it was supposed to see the light of day, calling it a transparent move to shift attention away from economic problems.

Breaking the Jobs Report Embargo

Here's what happened: Trump posted charts on Truth Social featuring Bureau of Labor Statistics data from the December jobs report a full 12 hours before the official release. The charts showed that private-sector job creation hit 654,000 in early 2025, while government employment dropped by 181,000—cuts Trump attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting operation run by Tesla Inc. (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.

In a post on X Sunday, Warren argued that Trump's decision to leak "market-sensitive data" was nothing more than an attempt to distract voters from his "failing economy."

Why This Matters

The BLS employment report isn't just another government statistic. Investors, policymakers, and businesses watch it obsessively because it has the power to move stock, bond, and currency markets in significant ways. That's why there's a strict embargo protocol governing who gets to see the data and when.

Under established rules, the data goes to the President through the Council of Economic Advisers the evening before release, and to the Secretary of Labor about 30 minutes beforehand. But it stays under strict embargo until the official release time. Sharing it early could give certain market participants an unfair advantage—exactly the kind of thing the embargo is designed to prevent.

A Pattern of Leaks?

This isn't the first time Trump administration officials have been accused of sharing sensitive information with select audiences. Early last year, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed the administration's potential tariff de-escalation plans with China at a closed-door investor summit. Those comments sparked a $2.2 trillion market surge, but retail traders had no access to the information that moved the markets.

More recently, Lauren Smith, the head of marketing at Fannie Mae (FNMA) and an ally of Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, was accused of leaking confidential mortgage pricing data to benefit a competitor.

The pattern raises questions about information asymmetry—who gets to know what, and when. When government officials share market-moving data with some people before others, it creates an uneven playing field. That's the concern Warren and others are raising, beyond the partisan back-and-forth about economic performance.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.