February

Foreign multinational companies doing business in Mexico, or with Mexican companies, and wishing to streamline their international data transfer flows should take note of a recent development. A sophisticated self-regulatory system is being implemented, and will be deployed from the end of this year. This will benefit all companies seeking a flexible way to comply with the Mexican data protection legal framework from next year's first quarter.

"For years, we've seen a decline in the labor force participation rate (LFPR). That's the number of people available for work as a percentage of the total population of working-age people.

JP Morgan's David Kelly has a post on the five reasons he thinks the LFPR is declining. ""While some of this decline may be cyclical, we believe most of it is structural,"" Kelly writes. ""In particular, the aging of the baby boomers, a rise in the number of Americans receiving disability benefits, and an increase in criminal records and background checks all seem to have played a role in depressing the employment rate."" If the LFPR really is being depressed by companies that won't hire people with criminal records, that cuts a huge chunk of the population off from a lot of job options they are more likely to get discouraged, and more likely to never return to the labor force if they are unemployed.

Just how many people does it affect? Based on recent Justice Department data the number of people with some sort of criminal record that may be impacted is now likely above 70 million when filtered for a number of factors. That count includes people with all types of criminal records, from violent felonies to minor charges. In some cases, even people who were arrested but never convicted still have a criminal record."

Commercial truck drivers who had a blood alcohol concentration at or above 0.08 g|dL, which is currently the legal threshold for individuals to be considered driving while drunk throughout the nation cause 78 completely preventable deaths and 2,080 completely preventable injuries annually.

To prevent this kind of tragedy from occurring each year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has proposed that a commercial driver clearinghouse be created. It would monitor drivers and ensure that they are not engaging in risky behaviors like drinking and using drugs before or during their employment as a commercial driver. Although federal laws have been in place for years prohibiting these practices, no system has been created to allow trucking companies the ability to find whether or not their drivers or potential hires have been guilty of breaking the laws.