Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom ACA Surprise No Increase in Part-Time Employment

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom ACA Surprise No Increase in Part-Time Employment When the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, first passed, many speculated that there would be an increase in part-time employment. By reducing the work hours of existing full-time employees, or by increasing the number of part-time employees hired, employers could avoid ACA’s mandate that they must offer health insurance to all full-time employees. To briefly recap, the Affordable Care Act provision for employer shared responsibility required that starting January1, 2015, large firms (those with 100 or more full-time equivalent or FTE employees) must offer affordable health insurance to their full-time workers (people working 30 or more hours per week) or pay a penalty. Implementation of the mandate was postponed until 2016 for midsize companies (those with 50â€"99 FTE employees). Small firms (those with 49 or fewer FTE employees) are exempt from the mandate. Some experts were certain that within a few years of ACA passing, we’d find increases in employment just below the 30 hour threshold. They also guessed that the ACA, by expanding access to means-tested public and publicly subsidized coverage, would create work disincentives. Changes in incentives for part-time employment might be particularly strong in jobs where full-time employment confers eligibility for employer-sponsored insurance, given that this eligibility generally makes workers ineligible for subsidized Marketplace coverage. For the rest of the piece, check out the SilkRoad blog.