When it comes to the stagnant economy and the lack of job growth Obamacare is the elephant in the room no one is supposed to talk about, the main cause behind the permanent part-time work force. In fact opponents of the “Affordable Healthcare Act” (AKA Obamacare) correctly predicted that it would create a perverse incentive for employers to hire workers on only a part-time basis in order to avoid the increased expense of funding an Obamacare qualified healthcare plan for them! So this permanent part-time work force won’t change into a full-time work force unless and until Obamacare is repealed. Keep in mind that the true purpose of Obamacare is to destroy the health insurance industry so that the federal government will be forced to create a government funded (“single-payer”) national healthcare service (NHS). Socialized medicine just like the UK and Canada. The plan is that when Obamacare does fail due to insolvency the Republicans will have no choice but to support the Democrats in creating a government-run NHS to replace it. There will no going back to the old free market system because the private health insurance providers will all be out if business. In the meantime the six-million part-time workers will have to stay part-time. What has happened to them is just collateral damage in the great “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”.
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There are 6 million part-time workers who want full-time jobs, a historically high number that hasn't budged since September.
And it's Worry Number One for Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. She has talked about part-timers at each of her last three press conferences, at nearly every speech in the last six months and at both of her past two testimonies to Congress.
Yellen's worries stem from the fact that the part-time U.S. workforce is at "very high levels."
Excluding the Great Recession, the 6 million Americans who work part-time but want full-time jobs today are at the highest level in about 30 years or so. The number has come down since its peak during the recession but some experts believe America now has a "new normal" -- a permanently high number of part-timers.
Experts call these jobs "hidden unemployment" because these people are capable of working more hours than they can get.
It's a tough situation. About 25% of part-time workers lives in poverty, according to a study by Rebecca Glauber, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. Only 5% of full-timers live in poverty.
Many part-timers are paid less per hour than full-time workers with the same responsibility and job. They're more likely to lose their jobs than full-time workers and they often have no health benefits or paid time off, according to Chris Tilly, a UCLA economics professor.
"The practice of offering part-timers a much-reduced benefit package is close to universal." says Tilly.
Monica Valerio is a good example. She would do anything for a full-time job.
Valerio was laid off from her job at Stanford University's human resources department in 2009 after working there for 20 years. Since then, she's worked a part-time job at a nutritional supplements company in the Bay Area. She has no health benefits or paid time off.
Now, at age 60, she fears she'll never get another full-time job and will have to sell her home to avoid bankruptcy.
"I really thought this part-time job would be temporary," says Valerio, who lives in Alameda, Calif. "It's getting harder and harder to make ends meet as the years go on."
Valerio says she makes $18,000 a year at her current job. At Stanford, she made $63,000. Despite constantly searching and applying for full-time jobs, she feels employers turn her away because of her age.
"People like me are dinosaurs in the job market," she says.
The U.S. job market looks very healthy overall: the unemployment rate is 5% and American businesses have been on a hiring spree the past two years. But the sore spot in the economy remains part-time workers.
The number of "involuntary" part-time workers reached a high of 9.2 million in September 2010. But in the last three decades the involuntary part-time workforce averaged about 4.8 million -- a lot lower than the levels today.
"It's a big part of what's wrong," says Robert Brusca, an economist at FAO Economics, a consulting firm.
Part-time workers are central to the debate around the job skills gap in America and paltry wage growth in recent years, which is a major reason why Americans don't feel great about the economy.
Beyond job skills, some experts point to the Affordable Care Act -- or Obamacare -- as a reason why part-time work remains high.
At the start of 2015, a key provision in the law stated that employers of large businesses had to offer health care coverage for employees who work 30 hours or more per week.
To avoid that law, several companies like Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), Trader Joe's, Home Depot (HD) lowered the number of hours that employees worked to avoid paying health care. Some ended health care coverage for part-timers in 2013 and 2014. Thousands of workers were impacted.
With the rise of the gig economy, where people have part time jobs such as driving for Uber, some experts say the United States will have a permanently higher number of part-timers. However, it's unclear if Uber drivers, who epitomize the gig economy, are working part-time voluntarily or because they can't find other jobs they are qualified for.
Valerio too is considering becoming an Uber driver to pick up some extra income while she seeks a full-time job.
"I don't see a future in what I'm doing now," she said.
CNNMoney (New York) First published April 25, 2016: 1:25 PM ET
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