The Coming Part-Time Workforce

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2011/03/the-coming-part-time-workforce

One of the best assessments I've seen of the practical impact of ObamaCare comes in this study from Lockton Companies LLC, an employee benefits consultant that aggregated the results of analyses the firm performed for 136 clients:

These companies that employ a large number of full-time, relatively low-paid hourly workers who do not have health coverage today, tell us they have but one option: eliminate large numbers of full-time positions. By making full-time employees part-time, the employees are removed from the penalty equation.

I was in a Citibank branch in New York City the other day and the place was plastered with flyers advertising for part-time tellers.

Link via HealthCarePayerNews.com, which also reports that in 2014 some employers will drop coverage and push or dump employees into subsidized "exchanges" where individual policies will be available for purchase: "Many clients have told us, 'We won't be the first to drop coverage, but we won't wait to be third, either.'"

The end to employer-paid health insurance wouldn't be the worst thing in the world — it's a vestige of wage controls to begin with, and it encourages overinsurance by allowing insurance to be bought with pre-tax dollars. But neither is it precisely what advocates of ObamaCare were touting to the public, unless you buy the idea that the whole thing was a backdoor plan by Obama to bring about single-payer government health care.

Nor are part-time jobs the worst thing in the world, either. Leftish economists point out they allow people to spend more time with their families, and if each job is for fewer hours, there are more jobs to spread around. But from the point of view of efficiency and productivity, there's an argument for government to be neutral when it comes to an employer's decision to offer full-time or part-time work, rather than the government pushing employers toward offering part-time work by imposing required benefits for full-time workers — benefits that are so expensive that they make a company's business model untenable.

Thanks to reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator A. for sending the tip.

by Ira Stoll  |  Mar 17, 2011 at 11:22 am Related Topics:  Banking, Compensation, Health Care, President Obama, Taxes receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list