THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT: A HIDDEN JOBS KILLER?

Many opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) predicted the law would hurt employment. A common complaint was that the requirement that firms employing more than 50 employees either provide insurance for employees working more than 30 hours a week or pay a penalty would lead many firms to cut back workers' hours to just below the 30-hour cutoff. This article uses the Current Population Survey to compare the share of workers employed between 25-29 hours in the first four months of 2013 with the same months of 2012. While the Obama administration subsequently delayed the application of this portion of the ACA, at the time larger employers would have expected to be subject to the insurance requirement. The analysis found the share of employment in this hour band was slightly lower in 2013 than in 2012.