WASHINGTON (AP) — The government on Tuesday mistakenly released data on consumer spending for November the day before its scheduled release.

In a statement issued at 8:20 p.m. EST Tuesday, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said there had been an "inadvertent release" of some data pertaining to consumer spending during November. The statement didn't say how long the data had been public before the mistake was discovered.

The prematurely released data showed that consumer spending for November increased 0.3 percent, in line with analysts' forecasts.

In its statement, BEA said it would "take steps to ensure that this does not happen again and will take all appropriate action to safeguard economic data."

BEA released a more comprehensive November report on spending, along with data on income growth and inflation, at the regularly scheduled time of 8:30 a.m. EST Thursday morning.