Large numbers of Americans haven’t lost their jobs under the Affordable Care Act as Republicans predicted, but there is evidence it has cost hours for a sliver of part-time workers.
More Americans are working just under 30 hours a week and fewer are working just over that threshold compared with mid-2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The shift isn’t large: the percentage of people working 25 to 29 hours a week increased about 1.5 percent while those working 31 to 35 hours declined by a similar amount. The movement could signal that some employers are responding to the law’s requirement to provide health coverage to full-time workers, defined as those putting in more than 30 hours a week.
That has been a charged question around the law — whether it would prompt employers to cut workers’ hours to just under 30, to save money on benefits. The House passed a measure in January redefining full-time work as 40 hours a week.
But many economists think that would shift the problem. If employers could get out of paying for health benefits by cutting hours to just below 40, more workers potentially would be affected, they say.
“I’ve never been a fan of that … because it’s not working through the problem very carefully,” said Casey Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago. “It’s not well thought out.”
Most companies offer workers health benefits, but Republicans have said the requirement would be too burdensome and cause employers to either slash jobs or cut hours. That was among the biggest charges they mounted against the law as it was being implemented.
Yet as the economy has improved, full-time employment has steadily risen while part-time employment has remained relatively flat. That has given the law’s supporters grounds to argue the law is helping jobs instead of hurting them and has put some Republicans on the defense.
NBC’s Chuck Todd drilled House Speaker John Boehner on the matter earlier this month, asking him on “Meet the Press” to explain why he said last year that the law would “destroy jobs.” The Ohio Republican gave a more qualified response, saying the law has “made it harder for employers to hire people.”
“The economy expands and as a result, you are going to have more employees because businesses have to,” Boehner said. “But if you ask any employer in America and ask them whether Obamacare has made it harder for them to hire employees, they’ll tell you yes. Because it’s a fact.”
A report last year from the Congressional Budget Office prompted vigorous debate over whether the law would cost jobs. The agency estimated there would be about 2 million fewer workers because of the law, although it said that’s because people would choose to leave the workforce, as they can now buy health coverage in the new insurance marketplaces instead of relying on their employers.
Conservatives point out that the full impact of the so-called employer mandate hasn’t been fully realized, since it hasn’t kicked in for the smallest businesses that are subject to it. Businesses with at least 100 workers had to start complying in January, and next year the mandate will apply to companies with 50 to 100 workers.
Mulligan says the healthcare law’s full economic effects won’t be known until the end of next year.
“We’re only getting an Affordable Care Act-lite effect so far,” said Mulligan, who has written a book about the effects of health reform. “Only the straw man says the ACA would have noticeably depressed employment in 2014.”
But while companies employing between 50 and 100 people are slightly less likely to already offer health benefits than large companies, almost 96 percent do, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Smaller employers are exempt from the mandate.
Gary Burtless, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, acknowledges that the economy may have recovered faster without the healthcare law. But it’s not easy to make that case, he says. And while the employer mandate could cause some employers to cut hours, it also could prompt them to hire more part-time workers to make up the difference.
“There are just so many routes through which the incentives on employers might affect work hours, that it’s not clear to me at all it has the effect that has been emphasized by many conservative critics of the Affordable Care Act,” Burtless said.
