May 1 (Bloomberg) — There is no evidence government employees were instructed to falsify U.S. jobs statistics, an investigation by the Commerce Department's inspector general's office concluded today.

The investigators "found no evidence that management in the Philadelphia Regional Office instructed staff to falsify data at any time for any reason," according to the report. "Further, we found no evidence of systemic data falsification" in that office, and "no evidence that the national unemployment rate was manipulated."

A November article in the New York Post alleged that government officials had prevented an accurate tally of jobless figures in the months leading to the 2012 presidential election. Under pressure from supervisors to boost response rates in the Philadelphia region, Julius Buckmon, a former Census Bureau employee, said he made up information for people he couldn't reach two years before the election, according to the Post.