Fed Dismisses Impact of PPACA on Part-time Jobs

[Liz]

According to this article, Federal Reserve economists have said that PPACA has had little or no real impact on the high percentage of part-time workers seen today. They note that PPACA will not change part-time workers' conditions.

From within:

“Before the law was passed, most large employers already faced IRS rules that prevented them from denying available health benefits to full-time workers. These rules gave employers an incentive to create part-time jobs to avoid rising health benefit costs. Moreover, recent research suggests that the ultimate increase in the incidence of part-time work when the ACA provisions are fully implemented is likely to be small, on the order of a 1 to 2 percentage point increase or less.”

Do you agree?

Fed dismisses impact of PPACA on part-time jobs | BenefitsPro

 

[timsip]

These are the same people that are saying that your health insurance will be more affordable than your cell bill and that premiums are not going up....

 

[RayNY]

The way the law is written, it's by an aggregate of hours. A company with, for instance, 52 employees working 29 hour weeks, is 1508hrs/mo, which is 50 FTE's. If, argument's sake, you have 40 traditional 40-hour FT's (1600hrs/mo), you'd actually skirt the requirement! Making "Full Time" 40 hours, actually means less people will count as FT, and even less EMPLOYERS will hit the requirement (to use my prior example, 1508/40 is only 38 (because you round up))

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you have to be stupid or wrong to think you can skirt this requirement by converting employees to PT, unless you can legitimately make due with less hours, in which case you shouldn't have had the extra employees in the first place.

 

[timsip]

The way the law is written, it's by an aggregate of hours. A company with, for instance, 52 employees working 29 hour weeks, is 1508hrs/mo, which is 50 FTE's. If, argument's sake, you have 40 traditional 40-hour FT's (1600hrs/mo), you'd actually skirt the requirement! Making "Full Time" 40 hours, actually means less people will count as FT, and even less EMPLOYERS will hit the requirement (to use my prior example, 1508/40 is only 38 (because you round up))

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you have to be stupid or wrong to think you can skirt this requirement by converting employees to PT, unless you can legitimately make due with less hours, in which case you shouldn't have had the extra employees in the first place.

Even with the 52 employees working 29 hours per week, the employer isn't required to offer insurance to those 52 employees since none of them are full time employees themselves. The only ones that would be required to have insurance offered are those that work more than 30 hours per week. Sure they fall under the 50FTE requirement, but without any actual full time employees, they still don't have to offer health insurance to the masses.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

The Federal Reserve has efed this country up left and right. A group of private bankers (not even American) own the Fed that owns our debt and loans us our own money. This leviathan cannot be trusted, it has brought the power of the purchasing down almost 100% since its inception 100 years ago (1913).

 

[Ann H]

The way the law is written, it's by an aggregate of hours. A company with, for instance, 52 employees working 29 hour weeks, is 1508hrs/mo, which is 50 FTE's. If, argument's sake, you have 40 traditional 40-hour FT's (1600hrs/mo), you'd actually skirt the requirement! Making "Full Time" 40 hours, actually means less people will count as FT, and even less EMPLOYERS will hit the requirement (to use my prior example, 1508/40 is only 38 (because you round up))

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you have to be stupid or wrong to think you can skirt this requirement by converting employees to PT, unless you can legitimately make due with less hours, in which case you shouldn't have had the extra employees in the first place.

There are 3 main issues, Ray. Yes part timers are included as a ratio of full timers when you are counting to 50. But the penalty does not apply to part timers and the group insurance does not have to cover part timers. So, even if the group is considered to have over 50 FTEs, the financial hits only apply to full time employees.

 

[RayNY]

Ann,

I get that if you're a WalMart sized company you can convert to "Part Time" and avoid offering insurance to those people (and the associated penalties).

Most of the controversy is around companies near the 50FTE cutoff freezing hiring or converting FT>PT to avoid being over 50. In my opinion, they must be doing something wrong or working with imperfect information if a company near the cutoff is converting FT to PT to avoid the penalty, assuming the same amount of work must be done. If they legitimately can do with less man-hours, than they should have downsized already.

Yes, companies way over the limit will convert as many as they can to PT to avoid having to cover them. Formerly, they would have just classed them all out as ineligible. Where there's a will, there's a way.

If they were to raise it to 40 hours (like they did in New York by the way, as per our SHOP training. It's literally a question on the test, I'm 100% sure it's 40 hours here. They even specify 2,080hrs/yr in the FTE math section.), they would just subtract lunch from all the FT'ers (totally legal and common), call them PT, and no company would have to offer it.