BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1996 The Washington Post (page 1) reports that the FBI has been called in to help the Fed investigate the source of a leak that eight of 12 Fed banks have recommended an increase in a key interest rate, according to sources familiar with the inquiry. The Fed late last week asked the Justice Department for help in finding the origin of the leak, sources said, and the FBI was assigned to the task ....The request to involve the FBI appears to confirm the accuracy of the leak, which came in the form of a Reuters news service report. The story caused bond prices to fall and interest rates to jump as analysts and investors concluded that Fed policymakers were more likely than the analysts and investors had thought to raise the short-term rates. A Fed spokesman declined to comment on any aspect of an investigation or even to confirm such an inquiry was in progress. Someone privy to such inside information as the requests to raise rates could use it to make investments that might rise in value when it became public or after the Fed had acted. Alternatively, a number of analysts said, a Fed official might have provided the facts to a reporter in hopes of affecting the outcome of tomorrow's meeting of the central bank's top policy making group, the Federal Open Market Committee .... In the national effort to move millions of welfare recipients into the work force over the next few years, the key challenge is not likely to be a lack of jobs, says The Washington Post (Sept. 22, page A1). For the most part, experts are convinced that the American economy can create the 2 million or so jobs for those who will be required to find work under the new welfare law. Nor will the problem be that adults on the welfare rolls, most of whom are women, can't compete for those jobs. Generally, case workers and state welfare agencies say that, although women on welfare typically have poor job skills and little education, most can still find at least an entry-level position ....The central issue most apt to stand in the way of true welfare reform is figuring out how to help these workers keep a job over a sustained period of time. What communities ... are finding through programs already in place is that many welfare recipients lack the kinds of basic resources, training, and practical experience that help middle-class workers weather the challenges of the workplace, everything from a credit card to use when the car battery dies to the "soft skills" that communicate a positive attitude and help employees deal with day-to-day office politics and workplace conflicts ....The Post says that the challenge of finding jobs and keeping them has been made much more difficult by the large-scale suburbanization of new employment and uses BLS figures on employment and unemployment in some cities, counties, and metropolitan areas .... Ten years after the agricultural economy collapsed, rural areas of America are growing again. Economists explain it by citing a big jump in the number of small-town manufacturing jobs, a stronger farm economy, quality-of-life concerns among baby boomers, especially those with young children, and the technological advances that allow many people to do their work wherever they wish ....(New York Times, page A1). Truckers' pay rises amid labor crunch. Shipping costs may increase for consumer goods ....The Wall Street Journal (page A2) says the beleaguered, obscure long-distance truck driver has suddenly become one of the most sought-after workers in America ....By some estimates, truckload carriers now employ more than 300,000 drivers, yet need 10 percent to 15 percent more. Just as troubling, shipping executives said, is the industry's high turnover rate among drivers, with many firms replacing more than 100 percent of their workforce each year. The shortage partly results from the boom in trucking, which now controls about 79 percent of the nation's $460 billion freight bill. But it also reflects a job with a long list of negatives. Nonunion long-haul drivers routinely live and work away from home for weeks at a time. Increasingly, they are being compelled to unload their trailers at their destination and to sort the freight. What's more, for years truckload-driver wages have lagged inflation, according to the National Survey of Driver Wages .... The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is taking its search for new federal workers to the World Wide Web. Today it inaugurates USA Jobs, a home page that it says will be updated daily to list openings in the federal bureaucracy. Job seekers can tailor their search by occupational category, geographic location, and pay level. They will also be able to get at forms and other employment information. The page will be at www.usajobs.opm.gov and was developed as part of the federal government's National Performance Review program (Washington Post, "Washington Business," page 17). DUE OUT TOMORROW: U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- August 1996
