Doubling down on job loss
The president continues to promote the recent Congressional Budget Office report that predicts that the U.S. labor force will lose the equivalent of 2.5 million more jobs as the result of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare. While he extols the benefits of having more flexibility in one’s job decisions as a result...
The president continues to promote the recent Congressional Budget Office report that predicts that the U.S. labor force will lose the equivalent of 2.5 million more jobs as the result of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare. While he extols the benefits of having more flexibility in one’s job decisions as a result of having more options to purchase health insurance coverage, he misses an important point: Not all job losses under ObamaCare are voluntary.
According to a new Institute brief, workers in the nation’s lowest-paid sectors may already be facing involuntary cuts to their work hours as a result of ObamaCare. 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 or below – the new government definition of full-time employment under the law. One state had no change in hours and one saw an increase.
These states represent one-quarter of the nation’s retail sector. While some of these states did see employment gains, the net loss of equivalent jobs, due to fewer hours worked, was about 1 percent of the retail sector’s total employment.
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 the president’s home state since 2011.
This week, the Obama administration announced a second one-year delay of the employer mandate. Businesses with 50-99 full-time or full-time equivalent employees will not be subject to fines and penalties for not offering “qualified” health insurance until Jan. 1, 2016. The government has defined “full-time” as any employees who work an average of more than 30 hours per week.
This delay is particularly welcome news for Illinois. Not only is the state expected to be near the bottom of states in job creation this year, the state is in the midst of a fiscal crisis and consistently has an unemployment rate above the national average. It is also great news for the millions of Americans who are working in the lowest-wage sectors of the economy.
The president also seems to believe that the person who decides to quit his job to write the great American novel isn’t the one most responsible for paying for his own health care. But this kind of flexibility should derive from one’s own financial security – not from a government health care scheme that undermines the economic well-being of others to achieve that goal for a select few.
The mounting evidence shows that employees in the lowest-wage sectors may be involuntarily working fewer hours as a result of the law. So, even if one believes that the employer mandate is an important component of providing “flexibility” to the nation’s employers and employees, one has to wonder why the individual mandate, which requires individuals to purchase health insurance by the end of March or pay a fine, remains unaffected. Wouldn’t that provide the most flexibility of all?