Companies slashing worker hours "because of Obamacare"

[Yo_Mama]

22. It has everything to do with the law

The full-time determination is made on the prior period's hours. Companies have some flexibility to pick the period, but if you are a retail company, your longer hours are in the end of the year, so you want to use the whole year. Thus companies preparing for the employer mandate in 2015 are mostly going to change staffing this year to get themselves set for 2014 (it takes time) so that they don't have to pay the fines for 2015.

All companies that work "flex hours" - higher staffing at some times of the year - generally want to use the entire year.

Since it was not until a few months ago that companies learned that the employer mandate would be set aside for 2014, many of them have already cut earlier in 2013.

This has been the result, and it will continue to accelerate the trend toward part-time employment:


There is a notable change in the usual recovery trend of expanding full-time employment:


And this now diverges from the normal trend quite sharply:


Retail average hours from the Establishment Survey:


Compared to the trend for employment: