ACA driving part-time nation

Evidence that the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is harming the nation’s labor market continues to mount. U.S. News & World Report Chairman and Editor Mortimer Zuckerman explained in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that less than one-half of working-age adults are working full time. Zuckerman lays blame to slow-growth and the...

Evidence that the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is harming the nation’s labor market continues to mount. U.S. News & World Report Chairman and Editor Mortimer Zuckerman explained in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that less than one-half of working-age adults are working full time. Zuckerman lays blame to slow-growth and the ACA. He is likely correct.

He writes:

“Full-time jobs last month plunged by 523,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What has increased are part-time jobs. They soared by about 800,000 to more than 28 million. Just think of all those Americans working part time, no doubt glad to have the work but also contending with lower pay, diminished benefits and little job security.”

While Zuckerman acknowledges the nation’s sluggish growth, he also cites the ACA as a leading culprit:

“But there is one clear political contribution to the dismal jobs trend. Many employers cut workers’ hours to avoid the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide health insurance to anyone working 30 hours a week or more. The unintended consequence of President Obama’s ‘signature legislation’? Fewer full-time workers. In many cases two people are working the same number of hours that one had previously worked.”

Since September 2013, the Illinois Policy Institute’s research has backed up the assertion that some firms have an incentive to reduce work hours and hold off on expanding the ranks of their full-time workers. More recently, an Institute analysis of 14 states found that workers in the nation’s lowest-paid sectors may have already been facing involuntary cuts to their work hours since the ACA was enacted. The report analyzed federal and state labor data and found that workers in the retail sector in 12 of the 14 states where data was available faced average annual declines in hours between 2011 and 2013. Six of those states saw average hours worked fall to 30 hours – the new government definition of full-time employment under the law – or below. One state had no change in hours and one saw an increase.

In Illinois, workers in the food service, general merchandise and retail sectors have seen a drop in the average number of hours worked to below 30 hours per week. The drop in average hours worked in these three low-wage sectors is the equivalent of 63,000 lost jobs in Illinois since 2011.

Mounting evidence shows that employees in the lowest-wage sectors may be involuntarily working fewer hours as a result of the ACA. This is yet another reason why it’s time to go back to the drawing board to craft solutions that give individuals control, rather than giving federal bureaucrats and the health-insurance lobby greater authority over health-care decisions. Allowing citizens to select options that best meet their own needs and preferences, rather than government-knows-best dictates, should be the primary goal of restoring affordability to the nation’s health-care system.