Watchdog advises ending early look at jobs data
Source: AP-Excite
By JOSH BOAK and CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Labor Department watchdog has recommended ending a practice that allows reporters to review a key unemployment report before it is made public.
Media "lockups" for weekly unemployment benefits are a problem because news outlets can feed the data to investment firms and financial exchanges immediately after the lockup ends, the Labor Department's Office of the Inspector General said in a report released Thursday.
Several news services use software to transmit the economic data to traders, who then profit because they have the data fractions of a second before other investors. The AP provides such data to the Nasdaq exchange, which then sells the data to its customers.
In its report, the Inspector General recommended adopting procedures that eliminate such competitive advantages or discontinuing the lockups entirely.
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