Trump administration’s plea to states: Keep mum about unemployment stats

The Labor Department is set to release the number of unemployment insurance claims next Thursday. It looks like there will be a lot more than this weeks 281,000

"In an email sent Wednesday, the Labor Department instructed state officials to only “provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)” until the department releases the total number of national claims next Thursday.

The email, which was shared with The New York Times, noted that the reports were monitored closely by financial markets and should therefore remain embargoed. “States should not provide numeric values to the public,” wrote Gay Gilbert, the administrator of the department’s Office of Employment Insurance."

Perhaps reasonable given the market panic atm. But I should add that I am no expert

dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22634197

(probably this is a better source, but, that has important comments)

Read for free: https://www.nytimes.com./2020/03/19/world/coronavirus-update...

I don’t understand why this is on HN.