The ACA’s employer mandate requires businesses with over 50 employees to offer health insurance to those working at least 30 hours per week. While some worried employers would hire fewer people or assign employees fewer than 30 hours per week, three recent studies found this isn’t the case.
Analysts from Chicago-based payroll-management firm ADP examined the payrolls of their clients’ firms and didn’t find a significant change in employees’ weekly schedules between 2013 and 2014. ADP CEO Chris Ryan said the competition for qualified employees is greater than the cost of health benefits.
Another paper in the journal Applied Economics Letters concurred, finding no change in the proportion of part-time employees in the sectors most likely to be affected.
A third study conducted by Bowen Garrett, PhD, and Robert Kaestner, PhD, of the Washington-based Urban Institute verified the same results. After analyzing the federal survey data, Dr. Garrett and Dr. Kaestner found the labor force participation, employment and usual hours for workers in 2014 were predictable given the economic conditions of 2013.
“There’s been a lot of talk about the ACA reducing the number of jobs or killing some jobs, and we simply don’t see the evidence of that in the data that we’ve been able to examine up to 2014,” Dr. Garrett said.
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