ObamaMESS: More and More Employers are Cutting Hours

The hits keep on coming — to the work hours of special education aides, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, home-care workers, adjunct faculty and college students. 

With this week's addition of 28 documented examples of employers cutting work hours to dodge fines levied under ObamaCare's employer insurance mandate, IBD's list now includes 429 employers.

Among the new additions are seven school districts, bringing the total to 130 districts where hours have been cut or permanent staff outsourced to avoid taking on new costs for employees who work at least 30 hours a week — considered full time under ObamaCare. 

In May, Oklahoma's Sweetwater County School District #1 said it would cut hours for more than 250 part-time and substitute employees to avoid as much as $2.7 million a year in added health insurance costs.

This month, the small Cass City Public Schools system in rural Michigan cut hours for 20 bus drivers and paraprofessionals to avoid up to $120,000 in extra insurance costs. One proposed way of coping with fewer transit hours: providing only one-way bus service for coaches and teams traveling to athletic events. 

In February, Indiana's South Madison Community Schools cut hours for 130 bus drivers, cafeteria workers, instructional aides and custodians to avoid up to $1.2 million in insurance costs.

Other new additions involve cuts to the hours of college students, adjunct faculty or both at Kansas University, Mississippi State University, the Technical College System of Georgia, Colorado Mountain College and South Dakota State University. 

IBD's list of ObamaCare job and hours cuts is dominated by public-sector employers, but that undoubtedly reflects their relative transparency about work policies, some of which come up for votes before school boards or county commissions.

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Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the workweek has also been depressed for modest-wage workers in the private sector, and the evidence points to ObamaCare's mandate as an important factor. 

One way to test for an ObamaCare effect on the workweek — suggested by White House economists, no less — is to look at whether there is a shift in the ratio of workers clocking 31 to 34 hours per week compared to those working 25 to 29 hours. 

If that ratio were stable or rising, it would be a sign that ObamaCare wasn't affecting work hours in a meaningful way, the White House has suggested. But the data signal the opposite: The ratio has plunged to the lowest level in almost 14 years.

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