The Washington Post (8/13, Ehrenfreund) reports in its “Wonkblog” that the Affordable Care Act “hasn’t meant less time on the job for American workers, according to three newly published studies.”
Congressional Republicans have argued that the law’s employer mandate, which defines full-time work as 30 hours a week, encourages business to cut hours below that threshold in order to avoid the requirement to offer coverage. However, an ADP analysis “found no overall change in employees’ weekly schedules between 2013 and last year.”
Another study, by Aparna Mathur and Sita Nataraj Slavov of George Mason University and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, “finds no statistically significant change in the proportion of part-time workers in the sectors most likely to be affected by Obamacare, such as janitorial and restaurant work.”
Finally, an analysis by the Urban Institute’s Bowen Garrett and Robert Kaestner “found that circumstances for workers last year were what you would predict based on overall economic conditions in 2013.”
