A Republican-led House committee is seeking an explanation from the Labor Department over how the federal agency leaked revised employment data to several Wall Street firms last month before it was released to the public, The Washington Post has learned.
The House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), sent a letter to Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su early Wednesday morning asking for more information about the failure to release the corrected data.
“At best, the BLS's failure to release the employment report has caused significant uncertainty and confusion and undermined confidence in the data,” the committee said in a letter to Su.
“At worst, BLS' actions may have given some companies an unfair advantage.”
On the morning of August 21, the Department of Labor was scheduled to release revised employment figures at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
The annual “Preliminary Benchmark RevisionAccording to the Economic Outlook for the United States, the number of jobs created in the 12 months to the end of March this year fell by 818,000, the biggest downward revision in more than a decade.
But the report, which was highly anticipated as Wall Street observers eager to know whether any economic data would raise the likelihood of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut, was released to the public more than 30 minutes later than scheduled.
It was later discovered that a select few Wall Street firms had contacted the BLS and obtained the data before its delayed release.
French multinational banking giant BNP Paribas and Japanese bank Mizuho Financial Group were the first to get the information while other banks waited. Bloomberg News reported last month.
“While the public was waiting for the release, the BLS provided some Wall Street firms with pre-release employment data,” the Republican-led committee said in a letter to Su on Wednesday.
“As a result, rumors spread on Wall Street, allowing some analysts to confidently report correct employment figures while others spread incorrect information.”
Fox called on the Department of Labor to reveal “the guidelines and regulations governing the release of employment statistics” and the names of Bureau of Labor Statistics employees who leaked the statistics before their release.
Email Records Bloomberg News Earlier this week, it was revealed that BLS officials had discovered that employment correction reports had not been posted to the website that morning and were frantically working to resolve the issue.
BLS officials learned at about 10:20 a.m. that day that the data was only available internally and was not available to the public on the web.
At that point, officials were inundated with calls seeking answers about the unpublished report.
The email said a BLS employee “shared the figures with some clients” that were not made available to the public.
“We are very sorry if we misunderstood the procedure and will accept any consequences,” one staff member wrote.
The Post has reached out to the Department of Labor for comment.
