Labor Bureau to Limit Data on Its Web Site

The Labor Department agency that prematurely released market-sensitive employment data said Friday that it will temporarily and partially curtail its use of the Internet while it conducts an internal review.

In a statement, Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Katharine G. Abraham acknowledged “some data users . . . may be inconvenienced” during the review, which will take “a minimum of two weeks and likely longer.”

Abraham attributed the error, which resulted in the release of the October employment report a day early, to “a serious failure of management control.”

A key number from the report, an increase in employers’ payrolls of 116,000 jobs, was loaded onto the bureau’s Web site Thursday morning as part of a supplementary table that normally would have been posted along with the full report Friday.

Financial analyst Ray Stone of Stone & McCarthy Research in Princeton, N.J., noticed it and e-mailed his clients after alerting the bureau that it had broken its own embargo.

Bond and stock prices rose in response to the figure because the weaker-than-anticipated job growth implied the Federal Reserve Board probably would cut interest rates later this month.

“The early posting . . . was accidental and resulted from inadequate internal control over the handling of supplemental information,” Abraham said.

During the review of the agency’s Internet procedures, it will stop posting supplemental information but will continue posting the main data report. In the meantime, supplementary data will be available by fax and mail.