Did Obamacare cut full time jobs? Not according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the past 17 years. In fact the number of full time jobs has grown since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in March of 2010. By that time, the percentage of full time jobs had already sunk to its lowest level in ten years. That massive decline was the result of the great recession that started in 2008. By the time the recession officially ended in late 2009, the ratio of full time to part time jobs had already started to climb. The number of full time vs part time jobs has continued to increase slowly but steadily straight through 2016. Still, many have speculated that Obamacare has caused companies to cut the hours of full time workers in order to avoid insuring them. The figures below tell a different story.
@HillaryClinton too bad obamacare has made it extremely difficult to get a full time job. Wage increase raises price of goods and services
— Jimmy Biggs (@JimmyBiggs79) September 6, 2016
Obamacare Hasn’t Cut the Percent of Full Time Jobs
The graph below was created by Advisor Perspectives from U.S. BLS data. It shows the Obamacare full time jobs effect clearly in blue and red. It’s fairly clear from the data that the 2008 economic crash brought the mix of full time jobs down from a high of 83.1% in late 2007 to a low of 79.9% in early 2010. Obamacare was signed into law three months after that bottom point. By then, the percentage of full time jobs had already begun to climb steadily, while the number of part time jobs shrank. That increase in full time jobs has continued even after January 2015. In that month, Obamacare’s $2,000 per-employee penalty was implemented. Beforehand, companies that ignored the law’s mandate to insure full-time employees faced no monetary penalty.
Image source: AdvisorPerspectives.com. Data source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Also see: US Median Income Sees First Increase in 8 Years
Obamacare Hasn’t Cut the Number of Full Time Jobs
How does the Obamacare full time jobs effect look in terms of real jobs? It’s true that percentages are one thing but numbers of actual human beings are something else. The chart above shows the percentage of full time to part time jobs, but not the actual numbers of those jobs. That means the total number of jobs could have gone up or down while the percentages changed independently. It’s the idea of the same number of slices of a shrinking or growing pie. Yet even in terms of real job numbers, it looks like Obamacare didn’t decimate the number of full time jobs. The chart below is from the Federal Reserve Bank. It shows the number of full time jobs in blue and the number of part time jobs in red. It’s clear from the chart that the economic crash shown in grey caused the real number of full time jobs to plummet. It’s also clear that the end of that recession saw a steep growth in the number of full time jobs. Interestingly, the number of part time jobs remained unchanged after the recession. The end result is that the total number of jobs increased, the number of full time jobs increased and the percentage of part time jobs went down.
