Your ♡bamaCare!!! Fail of the Day

You might have seen that report a couple weeks back, claiming that ♡bamaCare!!! wasn’t impacting employment.

Well:

As noted above, the White House economists tweaked their test of ObamaCare’s impact. Initially, they had counted the 5 million or so people reported by the census to be working exactly 30 hours a week as full-time under ObamaCare. Once IBD brought it to their attention that the census rounds up, counting 30 minutes or more as a full hour, the White House acknowledged that including those workers “may be misleading.

That rounding problem is all the reason needed to dismiss one of three new studies casting doubt on ObamaCare’s impact on work hours. The authors of an Urban Institute study treat all 5 million 30-hour workers as full time, rendering their analysis unreliable.

The New Normal means nothing has changed, comrades! All we have to do is define “full-time work” down from 40 to 30 hours a week, and it may then be determined that ♡bamaCare!!! has had a minimal impact of full-time work. Amazing, isn’t it?

More seriously, ♡bamaCare!!!’s impact is being felt and it isn’t good for those who need extra work the most:

After leveling off for a couple of years as the economy recovered from recession, the ratio began a sharp and sudden dive in 2013. In June of this year, there were 191,000 fewer workers with usual work schedules of 31 to 34 hours in their main jobs than at the end of 2012, a drop of 8%. Meanwhile, an additional 406,000 people usually worked 25 to 29 hours, up 12%. These figures average 12 months of data because the U.S. Census’ Current Population Survey (CPS) data are volatile from month to month.

The divergent shifts on either side of the 30-hour divide coincide almost perfectly with the initial measurement period for ObamaCare employer penalties that began in 2013. Potential liability is determined a year before the penalties are actually imposed, so employers began responding in a pretty big way in early 2013.

While the data show that the shift away from a 31- to 34-hour workweek became obvious in the final quarter of 2013, the data are consistent with employers adjusting work hours months earlier.

It’s almost as though employers respond to bad incentives.