Written by Steven Hansen
Is the employment recovery in the USA coming from part-time jobs? What affect did Obamacare have on part-time jobs?
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There was a lot of concern about a clause in Obamacare which considered 30 hours as full time employment where employers would have to provide health insurance. Here is a sample of the concerns in the media (from a September 2014 post):
The jobs report last week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics …. adds to mounting evidence that slow economic growth under the Obama administration isn’t just a hangover from the Great Recession but is a consequence of the ACA. Critics of the health care law have long warned that it would create perverse incentives for employers to shed full-time workers and for the unemployed to remain that way, as the University of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan has shown.
The data shows there has been little change in the levels of part-time employment (blue line in graph below) since the end of the Great Recession (or since 2014 when Obamacare took affect) – all the growth has been in full-time jobs (red line in graph below).
There is little difference between men’s and women’s part-time employment since the end of the Great Recession.
Significantly, however, part-time employment for whites has actually fallen. Black/African American and Hispanics part-time employment is elevated moderately. But Asian part-time employment is up even more (45 %).
This is a riddle – why has Asian part-time employment risen so significantly since the end of the Great Recession? Why has white part-time fallen? Why did Hispanic and Black/African American rise?
Should we blame Obamacare? 🙂
Other Economic News this Week:
The Econintersect Economic Index for September 2017 continues to remain in a tight range indicating static economic growth fundamentals for the fifth month in a row. However, this tight range remains in territory associated with normal growth. Six-month employment growth forecast is now indicating little change in the rate of employment growth.
Bankruptcies this Week from bankruptcydata.com: Perfumania Holdings, Uni-Pixel and Uni-Pixel Displays
