Businesses eliminated hundreds of thousands of full-time jobs to avoid Obamacare mandate

The Affordable Care Act requires businesses with more than 50 full-time employees to provide health insurance

By Jacob Passy of Market Watch. Excerpts:

"Up to 250,000 positions may have been eliminated by small businesses seeking to avoid Obamacare’s employer mandate, according to estimates in a new working paper distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Altogether between 28,000 and 50,000 businesses appear to have reduced their number of full-time employees from 2014 to 2016 because of the mandate.

“The size distortion is closely linked with whether a business offers employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) to its employees,” said Casey Mulligan, the study’s author and a professor at the University of Chicago. “Even by comparison with businesses employing fewer than 30 full-time workers, the propensity to offer ESI is low among employers with 30-49 full-time employees.”"

"For some time now, researchers have suggested that Obamacare might result in employment losses, not just at small businesses, as companies look to avoid the added costs associated with providing health insurance.

Meanwhile, a June 2016 study determined that 500,000 workers in the retail, hospitality and food service sectors were forced involuntarily into part-time employment as companies sought to circumvent the employer mandate. A separate Goldman Sachs study found that a few hundred thousand people found themselves in this position."