OBAMACARE,THE SEQUESTER and part time employment

It is time to get serious.

There are widespread claims that firms are cutting  hours worked and converting full time jobs into part time jobs because of Obama-care.

So what does the data say.  Below is a table of unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of part time employment by private and government employers.  The government data includes state, local and federal part time workers but I have also broken out federal part time workers in a separate column. The data  also is not seasonally adjusted, so generally month to month comparisons are meaningless and one should make comparisons between a month in 2013 and the same month in 2012.

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The data shows that private part time employment in 2013 is lower in every month but one than it was in the same month of 2012. Moreover, federal part time employment was just the opposite, rising in every month but January. In particular, in June and July, 2013, when firms were supposedly cutting hours worked to avoid having to pay for employee health insurance over 100% of the increase in part time employment stemmed from federal government employment.  This in turn was generated by employee furloughs brought about by the sequestration.

So over the last few months when Obama-care was supposedly causing a surge in part time employment the data shows that private part time employment actually fell, just the opposite of what is being claimed.

Overall, the data massively contradicts claims that Obama-care is responsible for the recent surge in part time employment. Moreover, it strongly supports the case that the recent increase in part time employment stemmed from the Sequester.

I can understand why papers like the Wall Street Journal will buy into such Republican misinformation, but I am really surprised that the New York Times  appeared to accept the misinformation even though they were publishing good data on the sequester. But as far as anyone else is concerned, I see no reason to take you seriously unless you can show good, hard data demonstrating that the BLS data is wrong.

PS. The Pentagon announced that it is reducing the number of furlough days DOD civilians must take from 11 to 6.