An editorial from the Charleston Daily Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — With all due respect to the increasingly small minority of Americans who still support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the law is doing to the economy exactly what its critics predicted.
Obamacare increased the cost of employment. Employers are replacing full-time positions with part-time work to avoid the mandate of providing health care insurance.
That is the finding not of some conservative think tank, but of the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia, which surveyed employers directly about Obamacare’s influence on employment, compensation and benefits.
The results as reported by the Wall Street Journal were astounding and alarming.
While 3 percent of employers said they are hiring more people due to Obamacare, 18 percent said they shifted many full-time positions to part-time. This helps explain why 12 percent of American jobs now are part-time.
Things likely will get worse. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that 34 percent of the employers served plan to hire more part-time workers than in the past.
The law drew a line at 30 hours of work a week before employers get hit with mandated health insurance subsidies, and employers are doing a limbo below that line…
