Employers Were Cutting Workers’ Hours Long Before Obamacare Was Around

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/23/2052961/study-employers-were-cutting-workers-hours-long-before-obamacare-was-around/

By Sy Mukherjee on May 23, 2013

Obamacare critics have been pointing to several companies’ claims that the law is forcing them to cut their part-time workers’ hours as proof that the health law is bad for businesses and employees. But a new report finds that employers were cutting health benefits and workers’ hours long before Obamacare was even an idea.

According to data compiled by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), large employers have increasingly been turning to part-time workers for their labor. Between 2007 and 2011, the percentage of workers employed in part-time jobs increased from 16.7 percent to 22.2 percent of the work force. That means that workers’ hours have also been declining, since using more part-time workers lets companies scale back on how many hours those employees can work.

But these companies’ cuts haven’t been limited to workers’ hours — they’ve been cutting back on part-time employees’ health benefits, too. During the same four year period, part-time workers experienced a 15.7 percent decline in the likelihood of having health coverage through their jobs:

As the graph demonstrates, that trend existed even before the recession, and has only gotten worse since then.

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