In news which appears to have first become known to the general public at the Financial Times on Wednesday, research done by Goldman Sachs indicates that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has led to more involuntary part-time employment — something which the Act's proponents claimed is something that wouldn't happen, and still insist hasn't happened.
How much more? According to the Times, "The New York investment bank reckons “a few hundred thousand workers might be working part-time involuntarily” as a result of the legislation’s employer mandate." Either that's a lowball estimate, or the job market and the "recovery" are far less impressive than even most contrarians believe.
The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics considers two categories of workers as working part-time involuntarily:
- Those who say they're working part-time instead of full-time because of "slack work or business conditions" at their current employer.
- Those who say that they "could only find part-time work."
The combined average number of workers in these two categories has been far greater during the past 17 months in an economy with which, as readers may recall, President Barack Obama has said we should be impressed, than the average seen during the middle years of the previous decade.
I don't know how anyone can be impressed with this:
During the strongest years of the horrible, awful, oppressive and ugly Bush 43 economy (that's sarcasm, folks), monthly involuntary part-time employment averaged 4.05 million. During the past 17 months, the average has been 5.95 million, or 1.9 million more. Even after adjustment for a currently somewhat larger civilian workforce, the difference only narrows to 1.7 million.
Goldman Sachs wants us to believe that only a "few hundred thousand" out of well over 1-1/2 million more involuntary part-timers are in that situation because of Obamacare. Either Goldman's estimate of the number of workers involuntarily toiling part-time because of Obamacare is really low, which seems likely, or the general conditions present in the Obama economy have otherwise seriously hurt part-timers who want full-time jobs — and that's before considering employment at temporary help services, which itself has averaged about 340,000 higher during the past 17 months (about 220,000 when adjusted for workforce size) than during the middle of last decade.
Thus far, the only establishment press item found in a Google News search at about 11:30 a.m Eastern Time Thursday morning was one by Greg Robb at MarketWatch.com.
Even if others in the press pick up on this item, Goldman's work, as I have demonstrated, has either understated the negative impact of Obamacare in this area, or has implicitly shown that the economy, seven years into an alleged "recovery," is still much rougher on part-timers looking for consistent full-time work than previous economies have been.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
