How ObozoCare Screws the Part-Timers

If you're a part-time worker managing to get by on 35 hours/week (or if you were forced to part-time of 35 hours or so), then you may be looking at even LESS time per week, courtesy of ObozoCare.

...Consider the treatment of full-time and part-time workers as an object lesson.

Exempting part-time workers is a concession to practicality. If companies had to provide insurance for all part-time and seasonal workers -- often unskilled and poorly paid -- the high costs (a worker-only insurance policy can run more than $5,000) would eliminate many jobs or inspire mass evasion. On the other hand, exempting too many "part-time" and "seasonal" workers would make achieving near-universal insurance coverage much harder.

So there's a balancing act: preserving jobs versus providing insurance. The problem isn't small. In September, 34 million workers, about a quarter of total workers, were part-time, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). But the BLS defines part-time as less than 35 hours a week; Obamacare's 30 hours a week was presumably adopted to expand insurance coverage. There are now 10 million workers averaging between 30 and 34 hours a week. To the BLS, they are part-time; under Obamacare, they're full-time.

Employers have a huge incentive to hold workers under the 30-hour weekly threshold. The requirement to provide insurance above that acts as a steep employment tax. Companies will try to minimize the tax. The most vulnerable workers are the poorest and least skilled who can be most easily replaced and for whom insurance costs loom largest...

Like, for example:

fast-food, retailing and hotel industries.

...Waiters and waitresses going below 30 hours a week will lose income. They make about $15 an hour with tips, says Jeffers. A server who drops five hours would lose $75 a week. Although some servers under the limit might increase their hours and incomes, jobs will become less attractive because earnings will be effectively capped.

Of course, the hotel and retail personnel will ALSO lose income--and state-and-federal income taxes will also decrease, along with Social Security revenues.

Smooth move, Barack!