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| The long term trend in average weekly hours is down, down, down. |
And the reason is simple and devious by design, in order to escape detection: Anyone working less than 35 hours is already part-time as far as the government statistical agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is concerned, so if hours are reduced from say 34 to 29 to comply with ObamaCare's new definition of part-time, that will never show up in the part-time numbers because that will not make the slightest bit of difference. People working 34 hours were already part-time as far as the BLS is concerned, so if they are cut back to 29 they will still be so.
The BLS here defines full-time as 35 hours or more per week, and part-time as anything less than 35:
"[Part-time] Refers to those who worked 1 to 34 hours during the survey reference week and excludes employed persons who were absent from their jobs for the entire week."
This is a well known fact. But it is little appreciated that as ObamaCare deviously defines full-time as 30 hours or more, that will by definition not make a difference to the BLS' statistical presentation, which doesn't begin counting full-time until hours are 35 or more.
It's as if the 30 hour rule were designed to exploit the bureaucratic inertia behind the different definition and fly under its radar.
The only way we'll be able to observe the perverse scaling back of employee hours is in the hours statistics. Unfortunately, the long-term trend in hours is down, down, and down, and it will be difficult to detect the new downward trend within the old downward trend. Besides, average weekly hours are up since ObamaCare passed, obviously because the economy is slowly improving from a great deficit, ObamaCare notwithstanding. Average weekly hours are actually up 2% since ObamaCare passed.
The Senate healthcare bill, like the Senate itself since the passage of the 17th Amendment, is a Trojan Horse meant to destroy the country as we once knew it. It were almost better if the Senate no longer existed, and the House expanded to the proportions it had formerly before the Reapportionment Act of 1929, itself a grievous offense against the liberties of the people.
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| Average weekly hours are up 2% since ObamaCare passed. |
