NEWS IN BRIEF, Continued from page 13
308,000 jobs in the past 12 months, nearly 10 percent of the overall gain. Mark Vitner, an economist at Wells
Fargo, says shifts in how Americans shop might have given the job market a temporary lift. Online shopping has boosted warehousing, shipping and trucking jobs during the winter shop- ping season, Vitner said.
TRUCKING EMPLOYMENT NEAR 8-YEAR HIGH The for-hire trucking industry
added 2,400 jobs in January on a sea- sonally adjusted basis, according to the Department of Labor’s monthly report, released Feb. 6. It also upwardly revised December’s job gains to 11,900—up from the 7,300. For-hire trucking employment now
totals 1.443 million on a seasonally adjusted basis—up 3.5 percent from January 2014’s 1.3947 million. It’s also up 16.9 percent from March 2010’s bot- tom from the most recent recession.
U.S. MAKES CROSS-BORDER MEXICAN TRUCKS PERMANENT Federal officials are making per-
manent a controversial three-year pilot program that allows Mexican truckers to haul goods inside the U.S. beyond the border zone. FMCSA will soon start accepting applications from Mexican truckers who didn’t participate in the pilot but want the authority to operate beyond the U.S.-Mexico border region. The move is likely to be met with
significant backlash from groups repre- senting independent truckers and labor interests, who teamed up in 2011 to unsuccessfully sue DOT in an attempt to scuttle the program. Critics maintain that FMCSA didn’t
have enough participants to determine if it would be safe to make the program permanent, an assessment with which the DOT’s Inspector General agreed. FMCSA maintains the program is
safe, saying the agency’s decision also took into account safety data from the
14 ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 1 2015
nearly 1,000 Mexico carriers already allowed to operate beyond the U.S. bor- der zone. A FMCSA analysis determined that those carriers and the 15 pilot par- ticipants operated just as safely as U.S. and Canadian carriers over the life of the program.
ARKANSAS GOVERNOR PROPOSES TO END MEDICAID EXPANSION AFTER 2016 Predicted to run $770 million over
budget, newly-elected Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) has called for the state’s “private option” Medicaid expan- sion to continue in its current form only through 2016. “This avoids harm to the 200,000-
plus covered through the private option and assures our hospitals and providers financial stability,” Hutchinson said during an address at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. In his statement, Hutchinson also
pointed out that getting rid of the pro- gram, which cut Arkansas’s uninsured rate in half, might save the state some money, but it would come at an enor- mous cost to the thousands currently enrolled in the private option, which was implemented as an alternative to Obamacare. Hutchinson introduced a compro-
mise that emerged after negotiations with legislators following his election in November. It would create a task force to recommend ways to overhaul the Medicaid system more broadly. “With regard to the private option,
it is time to close this chapter and start a new one,” Hutchinson said. “While we are turning the page and starting a new effort, our innovative efforts in Medicaid reform will continue.” The private option was championed
by Hutchinson’s predecessor Democratic Governor Mike Beebe who worked with
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